


The Horrors of the Franklin Farmhouse

by Michael_McGruder



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 00:03:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_McGruder/pseuds/Michael_McGruder
Summary: In this week's episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural, Ryan and Shane investigate a haunted house in rural Washington State. Ryan may have found his best evidence of the paranormal at the cost of both his passion project, and his best friend. Can the Ghoul Boys survive the consequences of their own reckless curiosity, or will they get what they wanted by losing what they have?
Relationships: Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej
Comments: 7
Kudos: 64





	1. Stone Tape

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write a BFU fic as an excuse to write a ghost story?  
Or did I write a ghost story as an excuse to write a BFU fic?  
For now that remains unsolved.
> 
> Enumclaw is pronounced Ee-num-claw.

⸙⸙

“On this week’s episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved we explore the Franklin Farmhouse as part of our ongoing investigation into the question; _Are Ghosts Real?_” Ryan introduced.

Shane looked into the camera with a deadpan shake of his head.

“Johnny Allen Green was a miner in Franklin, Washington. Formerly a coal mining town approximately 30 miles south of Seattle, now a long abandoned ghost town.”

“You can already tell this guy is shady,” Shane interjected.

“How do you figure?”

“Never trust a man with three names.”

“I can't wait to hear this stupid theory.”

“Think about it. Lee Harvey Oswald. John Wayne Gacy. James Earl Ray—”

“What’s wrong with Mufasa?” Ryan asked.

“What? No, you idiot, that’s James Earl _Jones_. James Earl _Ray_ was the guy who shot Martin Luther King.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Ryan wheezed. “But that proves your theory is dumb. James Earl Jones and Martin Luther King aren’t psychopaths.”

“It’s more of a guideline than a rule,” Shane shrugged.

“Franklin was a town of mostly Welsh, English, Italian, and Scotch-Irish immigrants. African American laborers were brought in from across the country with offers of good paying jobs and free transportation, something the white miners greatly resented.”

“Of course they did,” Shane said flatly. “We’re far more likely to actually catch a ghost than find a bunch of turn of the century white dudes who can stop being absolute pieces of shit for like five minutes.”

“I–it–ye–yeah,” Ryan sighed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring down the mood of this murder story so soon,” Shane laughed. “Continue.”

“Little is known about Green’s background before he moved his family to the Washington territory in the early 1880s, due to the fact that Green was not his real last name. Johnny Allen took the name Green after the Green River he built his farmhouse next to.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“What now?”

“I don’t pretend to know much about Washington. Rain. Coffee. Twin Peaks. Uh, you know, the broad strokes,” Shane said while holding up his hands in deference to the _‘well-actually’_ tweeters. “But I do know that the Green River is where serial killers dump bodies.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess there was _The_ Green River Killer,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, Ridgway.”

“Didn’t Ted Bundy dump a few bodies in the Green River as well?”

“I’m starting to think going to Washington was a mistake.”

“Johnny Allen Green was not well liked among his fellow miners. In fact, he was often referred to as Johnny _Greenhorn,_ implying an inexperienced newcomer. It had been rumored that he changed his identity to cover his involvement in a scandal back east. It wasn’t unusual for people from the East Coast to run from trouble to the northwestern territories at the time.”

“Some family’s having marital problems, and the husband’s like, _‘I’m going out to get the milk!’ _And he’s never seen again because he’s out panning for gold and hooking up with prostitutes in the Yukon.”

“Pretty much. Arthur Denny, one of the founders of Seattle, just fuckin’ dipped on his family back in Illinois.”

“He really wanted some clam chowder.”

“But we all know shady people come out of that part of the country.”

“John Wayne Gacy does not represent the Prairie State!”

“I was referring to the nation’s greatest tragedy, Shane Madej.”

“I put that on my resume now.”

“In 1894, a fire at the Oregon Improvement Company mine in Franklin lead to the deaths of 37 workers, one of the worst mining disasters in the state’s history. A jury later determined that the fire had been intentionally set by ‘unknown parties.’ It was speculated that the arsonist had perished in the mine with the rest of the workers, but a number of people in the community suspected Green.

“Between the loss of his mining job, and the mutual resentment between Green and the rest of the town, Green and his family began to isolate themselves. Green’s two children, Dottie and Minnie were pulled out of school, and Green’s wife, Virginia, was made to leave her job at the post office. A curious decision, given that the family had been relying on her income exclusively after the mining accident. Johnny Allen Green the only one ever seen outside the farmhouse.”

“Toxic masculinity is being so insecure about your wife making more money than you that you’d rather be eating dirt and pine cones.”

“You’re gonna wish they were just eating dirt and pine cones by the end of this story,” Ryan said ominously while reshuffling the papers in his manila folder.

“Oh god.”

“Franklin rapidly declined after the closure of the mine, and it went mostly unnoticed when people began to disappear in the interim years, the assumption being that they simply moved on to more thriving towns. At least until the remaining families in Franklin, and the neighboring towns of Black Diamond and Ravensdale began to disappear.”

“Very Gothic. _Black Diamond._ _Ravensdale_. Do you think they wore a lot of black flannel in those towns? Like goth lumberjacks?”

“Yeah, the first Hot Topic, circa 1855,” Ryan snickered.

“Ye Olde Fiery Discourse.”

“Strange noises in the woods, and occasional foul smells were blamed on Green’s farmhouse, and authorities paid them a visit in the fall of 1900 to ask if they knew anything about the disappearances. As soon as Green opened the door, they were overwhelmed with the putrid odor of decaying bodies.”

“Do you think it’s redundant to describe the smell of decaying bodies as putrid?”

“Green had butchered his entire family, leaving them to decompose in the same places they died. Virginia’s body was found at the bottom of the stairs, Minnie was found in her bed, and Dottie was found in Minnie’s closet, likely attempting to hide from her homicidal father. All three died from close range shotgun wounds. The Green family, however, were far from the only victims found on the property."

“You think his last name was Torrance before he changed it to Green?”

“Human remains were found in Green’s icebox, butchered like cattle. Bones were found strewn all over the property, as well as in the surrounding wilderness, likely spread by animal predation. Perhaps most horrifying of all were the bodies liquefying in the fruit cellar, in what some have described as ‘people soup.’”

“Jesus Christ,” Shane gagged.

“All in all, 17 bodies were found in addition to Green’s family, and five remain unidentified to this day. Johnny Allen Green was hanged for his crimes, and buried in an unmarked grave.”

“They probably just threw him in the ocean. Or maybe they dumped _him_ in the Green River?”

“Today, Franklin stands as one of the many ghost towns dotted around the Pacific Northwest, largely forgotten except as a shadow of America’s frontier industries, and the lives it left behind.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


The drive from Seatac airport to the modest sized city of Enumclaw wasn’t long, but the quiet hiss of the rain and the slow rhythm of the windshield wipers had a hypnotic effect on the rangy man curled up in the passenger seat. Shane roused when he sensed they had stopped, and reclined the back of his seat to stretch his long limbs. He rubbed the grit out of his eyes before putting on his glasses and looked out the window. Life as a reluctant ghost hunter ping-ponged him across different cities all over the country, but there wasn’t much to distinguish one from another. They usually didn’t have extra time to sight see, and every strip mall greasy spoon, truck stop, and fast food joint strung along the grey ribbon of highways looked the same to him.

“We here?”

“Almost,” Ryan said. “I was getting hungry and wanted to get something to eat before we check into the motel.”

It was late and they were outside the city, but it still made Ryan anxious that they were the only ones in the diner. As if the locals knew something he didn’t. Were they about to find out why no one else was around? Once he went to return a video, and the place looked empty, but he still walked in rather than dropping the tape in the night drop. An alarm started shrieking as soon as he pushed open the glass door. Someone forgot to lock up after closing. He threw his video on the counter and booked it down the street, not waiting around for the cops to show up. Ryan’s mind was always set to yellow alert when he was the only one in a public place.

“Did you know,” he said, sneaking a fry from Shane’s plate, “that the name Enumclaw is derived from a Salish Native American term that translates as ‘_place of evil spirits_?’” He scrolled through the Wikipedia article on his phone.

“They probably told white people that so they’d stop coming over and stealing their shit. _‘Oh, this looks like a good place to put up some sawmills and boarding schools, what do the __Natives__ think?’_ And the tribe was like, _‘oh, that’s where the demons live actually, go there if you want to die.’_”

Ryan could see the old woman at the counter throw them a dirty look.

“Apparently it refers to some evil incident that occurred on the Enumclaw Mountain.”

“Yeah, or the wind,” Shane said, having navigated to the same article. “Guess which one I think it is.”

He slapped Ryan’s hand away from his plate and stuffed all the remaining fries in his mouth at once out of spite.

“You and your obsession with wind.”

“Ol’ Shane ‘Windy City’ Madej.”

“I thought it was because you were a bag of wind.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

A clattering of plates in the kitchen sent Ryan jumping out of his skin, and he was irritated to see Shane lounge comfortably with his legs propped on the opposite booth, unmoved by the sudden noise.

“I told you to switch to decaf. We just got here and you’re already winding yourself up. You need to chill out or you’re gonna die of a heart attack before the ghosts can scare you to death,” Shane laughed. “What’s rattling your chains?”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Ryan’s eyebrows reached for his hairline.

The old woman glared at him again, and he lowered his voice.

“We are going into a _cannibal_ _murder house_, that sits right between a _ghost town,_ with a _haunted mine _on one side, and a huge churning _river _on the other.”

He threw up his hands in frustration when Shane slowly blinked one eye at a time at him, loudly sucking up the last of his drink.

“Is there some murder math I don’t know about?” he asked, pushing his glasses back into place. “Because it doesn’t seem like the amount of people who died in one place make it more likely to be haunted. If there was some kind of cumulative death energy, then every city in the world would be overrun with ghosts. The entire country is a Native American burial ground.”

“It’s not just that. There’s the mine accident, which has its own separate psychic trauma, and that maybe connects back to Johnny Allen Green. You’ve got the tragedy that happened in the house, the family and everyone else he killed, okay?” He rolled his eyes as Shane counted out the horrors on his fingers.

“So, very likely, 54 deaths caused by a very violent spirit in this house—”

“54 deaths that were caused by a living human man, Ryan.”

“Yeah, but that kind of violence isn’t cleaned off your soul.”

“Like curry tupperware stains.”

“Not only that, okay, but all of that violent energy is walled off and amplified by the kinetic energy of the river, feeding it right back into the area. And that house is right in the middle of all that energy, right in the middle of a ghost vortex.”

“A ghost vortex is possibly the dumbest thing you’ve ever been afraid of. And what fucking rule book are you pulling all this shit from? The hardcover edition of Ryan Bergara’s Ass.”

“You boys need to watch your mouths!” the woman finally said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ryan apologized, slightly embarrassed.

Shane flashed her an insufferably smarmy grin, and the woman continued to glare at them as they paid for their meal.

“The kinetic energy of the river is agitating latent psychic forces, mixing them up with active ones, and supercharging everything,” Ryan continued in the car.

“What a load of horse shit.”

They pulled into the motel across the bridge from the Franklin ghost town. While checking in, the desk clerk eyed their camera equipment suspiciously.

“You aren’t going into any of those mines, are you? Don’t go messing around in there, there’s all sorts of dangerous equipment, and you can’t trust any of whatever’s left of the supports to keep rocks from coming down on your heads,” the woman warned.

It sounded like she’d had to give this warning before.

“We came up here for the gold rush, but we’re a little late,” Shane said, checking his watch. “But it’s ghost hunting season, so if we bag a couple ghouls it won't be a totally a wasted trip.”

“Uh huh. Well, stay out of those mine shafts,” she said, handing over their room keys.

“Oh shit, Boogara! _Room 13!_ Do you want to head back to the airport now? It’s not too late to turn around, we can still catch the red-eye to LAX.” Shane rattled the plastic number fob in front of Ryan.

“I’m just going to ignore you and your stupid face,” he said, snatching the keys out of Shane’s hand and unlocking their room.

They unpacked their bags, and Ryan picked up their conversation while Shane brushed his teeth.

“I feel like Green’s farmhouse is a dumping ground for some kind of psychic waste. It’s kind of like… okay this is gonna sound stupid, but stay with me here.”

“Everything you’ve said up to now has been outrageously stupid, so I can’t even imagine what gibbering madness you’re gonna lay out at this point,” Shane said after spitting out his toothpaste.

“Did you ever look into the behind-the-scenes notes for Ghostbusters explaining what exactly Slimer is?”

“The ghost of John Belushi? No, Ryan. It may surprise you I never really delved that far into the storied lore of Slimer the ghost.”

“Well, if you had, you’d know that Slimer isn’t really a ghost, not like we think of them. He was never human.”

“Wouldn’t that make him a demon? Slimer would probably make the most pathetic demon ever, besides myself.” He finished in the bathroom and stretched out on his bed. It wasn’t the first time his feet dangled off the end of a cheap motel bed.

“You’d think so. He’s not a human, and he’s not a demon. He’s a sentient collection of ectoplasmic waste, the flotsam and jetsam of areas with high concentrations of paranormal energy.”

“Ryan,” Shane said, running his hands over his face as a wave of fatigue suddenly went through him listening to his friend’s insanity. He could sense Ryan was nowhere close to winding down, and he closed his heavy lids just to rest his eyes.

“This is the the stupidest… you’re sourcing a comedy about Bill Murray chasing ghosts with lasers. What are you even—”

“I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here, I’m not saying it’s some kind of 1:1 ratio. I’m just saying it might present the seed for an interesting hypothesis. I’m saying it’s _possible_ something like that could happen. That that kind of energy could start to sort of… leech into places, into inanimate objects. Any Shinto priest would tell you something similar.”

“Well bring one along next time, I’m sure he’d become a fan favorite, like Daddy Thomas.”

“I don’t think you should call him that,” Ryan mumbled. “I’d love to see how close the farmhouse is to a ley line.”

“Oh Jesus. You might as well start looking for answers in fortune cookies, Ry.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Shane awoke to familiar sounds of distress. It was still dark and he didn’t bother checking the time. Groggy from sleep, he pushed himself out of bed and sat on the edge of Ryan’s.

“Hey man,” he said quietly as he draped a gentle hand over his friend’s shoulder.

“Hmm, shit,” Ryan mumbled and sighed. The tension melted away from his muscles as he surfaced from his nightmare.

“You good?”

“Yeah.”

Shane gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze and crawled back into bed, as he’d done so many times on these trips.

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


They parked the car near the bridge and found the forked trailhead, marked with an old coal cart and two weathered signs. Just two-by-fours nailed into posts, really. The information was carved in a childish scrawl, likely by one of the local junior high students credited with the Franklin restoration project. It should have been cute, but reading CEMETERY in children’s handwriting was over the top horrific, and Ryan suddenly felt like he’d walked into a horror movie. Neither he nor Shane were exactly Final Girl material.

To Ryan the dense woodland felt like a sprawling trap waiting to snap closed, chewing them up in its thorny snarl of blackberry teeth along with the rest of the ruins. At times the trail became so narrow they had to walk single file, and the way it edged up to a steep drop-off wasn’t particularly reassuring. He rattled off more details he’d collected in his case file to keep his imagination from wandering too far into the wilderness.

Shane was always impressed with the work his friend put into these investigations, and he could appreciate his attention to detail in principle. But he also didn’t think collecting grisly murder trivia added anything of much value to his day. He didn’t wonder why his friend had nightmares. Shane breathed in a lungful afternoon air, rich with the scent of cedar, pine, and mulchy wet leaves, listening more to the chattering ravens than his friend.

“Did you hear me?” Ryan asked.

“What’s that?”

“You’ve been licking your teeth all the way up here, what is wrong with you? Do you have cotton mouth? Are… are you stoned?”

“Maybe,” Shane failed to hide a guilty smirk.

“Unbelievable,” Ryan sighed. “How have you managed to get this far in your life with absolutely no sense of self-preservation?”

His dark eyes narrowed while Shane slowly pulled a bag of Cheetos out of his pocket, opening it without breaking eye contact.

“I hate you.”

“Hey, man. Maybe I’m just trying to like, keep my third eye open, or some shit.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how that works,” Ryan said.

He begrudgingly grabbed a handful of Cheetos when Shane held the bag out to him.

“You couldn’t even get hot fries.”

The cemetery wasn’t what they were expecting. The trail foliage became denser the closer they came, and the graves themselves were nestled into the overgrowth that threatened to swallow them completely. They carefully moved aside the sticker bushes to read the engravings.

“‘_Romulous Monroe Gibson_,’” Shane read. “Now that’s a name!”

“‘_Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,’_”Ryan read the inscription under the death date and felt goosebumps wash over his whole body. His hand slipped into his pocket to palm the silver bullet shaped phial of holy water. There were graves for children as young as six days old. He kneeled down and rest his hand against the cold petite stone.

“What am I doing here? What the fuck am I doing out here?”

“I guarantee you, a little weed whacking and this place gets 500% less scary.”

Ryan pretended to be exasperated, but this was one of the reasons why he brought Shane along to find the things that scared him the most. His deadpan, laissez-faire attitude about everything that went bump in the night kept an anchor of stability and baseline of sanity that Ryan could measure against. It might be infuriating while they reviewed their evidence in the sound booth, but standing in a century old ghost town graveyard in the cold mist of the Pacific Northwest, Shane was as essential as the holy water in his pocket.

“I’d love to be buried here,” Shane said. “I’ve said this before, you can just throw my body away and let the dogs have it. But the way even the graves here are being quietly taken back by nature… I don’t know, it’s kind of comforting.”

As they left the cemetery and headed towards the farmhouse, Ryan felt it a little easier to appreciate the view of the great white mountain reaching above the evergreen valley.

“Down the leafy pathway.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


“You said the cops grabbed this guy in the fall?” Shane asked as they looked around the outside of the property while there was still some daylight.

“Yeah, why?”

“Do you think they saw bones scattered around the yard and maybe thought they were just Halloween decorations?”

“My instinct is to say no, but dumber things have happened.”

“Like, you’ll hear those stories about how the neighbors thought it was suspicious when the hanged man decoration was still up in December.”

“In this case though, I’m guessing the smell would probably have tipped them off.”

“I think that’s how they catch on to the guy in the tree as well.”

“Jesus Christ, dude,” Ryan wheezed.

“What’s wrong with you? You keep flashing those _sanpaku_ eyes,” Shane teased.

“I seriously regret telling you about that. I know I ask this all the time, and I’m just gonna be frustrated by hearing the same answer again, but you seriously feel nothing here? You don’t even feel a little bit weird?”

“No.”

They found the doors to the fruit cellar, and Shane toed the corner of one of them.

“At some point the entrance to the cellar was bricked up,” Ryan said, pulling one of the doors open to reveal a concrete seal blocking the entrance.

“I don’t know if they did that to keep out animals, or squatters, or people like us.”

“Probably to keep the demons inside.”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

They strapped their equipment on under the cover of the porch as the last of daylight faded. Ryan took slow, deep breaths attempting to center himself. His hand rested heavily on the doorknob for far too long before he stepped away, stomping his feet and shaking his hand like he was trying to restore circulation, grinning through his discomfort. Shane gave him a few hard claps on the back and opened the door himself. In the small entrance their eyes were immediately drawn to the dark, greasy looking stain at the bottom of the stairs in the hall.

“I fucking hate this,” Ryan hissed.

“This happened, what over a hundred years ago? That probably isn’t what you think it is.”

“That doesn’t make it better if that stain appeared here by _coincidence_. Like a reminder of what happened. Like the house doesn’t want you to forget.”

“What are you positing here? The house has a mind of its own? It’s trying to mess with you? Is the house a ghost too? Imagine that on the home improvement channel. I might actually tune in.”

“This is what I was saying before,” Ryan said as they turned right to explore the living room.

“Right, tupperware—_fuck!” _Shane grabbed at Ryan’s arm as his foot went through one of the rotting floorboards.

“Shit, okay, we have to be careful here,” Ryan said nervously. “I hope this place doesn’t collapse in on us.”

“We’d have been safer in the mines,” Shane griped.

They stepped carefully around the room to set up their cameras, and crossed the hall to the dining room to do the same. They found four folding chairs surrounding a beat up old dining table.

“Looks like you were right about squatters. AVON CALLING! ANYONE HOME?” Shane bellowed at the top of his lungs.

They listened for any sounds of stirring, but the house remained silent. Shane pulled up a chair and sat at the head of the table, lacing his fingers together in front of him.

“Did anyone live here after the Greens?”

“Not according to the purchase history I could find,” Ryan said.

“It’s weird that this house is still here, considering the rest of Franklin is just a pile of rocks and cart rails. This house hasn’t been maintained as a tourist gimmick? Like the Borden House, or something?”

“I didn’t see anything that suggested there’d ever been any commercial or historical preservation interest.” Ryan watched Shane sitting at the table for a moment before asking, “how do you feel sitting there?”

“Um. Kinda hungry.”

“Green ate people in here, you fucking psychopath.”

“My stomach is making the rumblies that only hands can satisfy.”

“You did not just—”

“Let’s go see what’s cookin’ in the kitchen.”

The kitchen wasn’t much smaller than the dining room, but Ryan felt like it contained half the oxygen. The air felt thick and heavy. Infuriatingly, Shane seemed as disaffected as ever while looking through the cabinets. He found the door leading down to the cellar, but the knob was either locked or rusted in place and didn’t move. A rapid slideshow of horrors flashed in Ryan’s mind as he imaged what could possibly be behind that door. Shane knocked _shave and a haircut_, watching Ryan’s wide eyes as they listened for the _two bits_ than never came.

“You gotta get out of your head, man. Even I can feel the nervous energy radiating off you.”

“Is the Shaniac himself admitting he’s sensing energy?”

“No, I can just literally feel you vibrating the floor. You want to do some flashlight work in here?”

“Yeah, alright,” Ryan said, pulling out the flashlights. He handed one to Shane and they unscrewed the light enough to hit their sweet spot, then set them on the counter. They both flickered for a moment before blinking off.

“I guess we’re gonna try to reach out to Johnny Allen Green?”

“Unless you wanna try to chat up whoever ended up in the stew pot?”

“Jesus Christ. We don’t know any of the victims besides Green’s family, so I wouldn’t know how to contact them anyway. Probably for the fucking best.”

Their heads swiveled towards the flashlights as both of them blinked on.

“Is Chef Green in the house? We should have brought a dinner bell.”

“If this is Johnny Allen Green, can you turn the black light off, and the white one on?” Ryan asked.

They both remained on.

“Yo Johnny! If you’re up for a late night snack, why don’t you turn that black light off, huh?”

Both lights blinked twice, and then winked out. The flashlights didn’t cooperate with any of their other questions, and they didn’t notice any other indications that spirits might be listening, or receptive to interaction. Ryan thought he could smell some kind of off, slightly sweet odor that made his stomach roll.

“Well this is a bust, you want to get the fuck out of this kitchen?” Ryan turned on his heel without waiting for a response. Shane screwed the flashlights back together and followed him to the dining room.

“Hey listen, if we strike out with the spirit box as well, I brought a ouija board,” Shane said, holding the flashlight under his chin to create a spooky mask of light.

“You did what the fuck? Fucking goddammit, you fucking—”

“What are you worried about? We shit talked demons with this thing and nothing happened, except winning a sickass a bridge. This guy isn’t even a demon, he was just a guy. A real fucked up guy.”

“Except for the fact that this place has been supercharged with energy!”

“Yeah, yeah. But the Boogaras are 0 and 1. Unless you know in your frightened little heart that ghosts aren’t real? I mean if you can’t find them here, why would you find them anywhere else? This is prime Ghost Town real estate, baby.”

Ryan slapped away the teasing finger poking towards his face, and Shane pulled out the board he smuggled in his bag. It was unlike any ouija board Ryan had ever seen, and he stared at it in disbelief as Shane spread it out on the dining table.

“Is that a fucking Barbie ouija board? What the fuck is that?”

“If we’re gonna sit in the dark and taunt ghouls, don’t you think it adds a certain level of dominance if we mock them with a pink board and a little heart shaped planchette? And it adds a nice pop of color. The aesthetic shouldn’t influence the efficacy of the tool, right?”

Ryan rubbed his face roughly a few times and tugged on his hair. He closed his eyes and tried slow his heart rate down. As much as he didn’t want to run into anything that had ever been in this house, they didn’t come up here just for a slumber party in a murder shack. He jumped when Shane dropped a hand on his shoulder.

“There’s nothing here, man. We didn’t even get anything with these stupid flashlights.”

“You’re fucking dead inside if you don’t feel weird in this house right now.”

“I didn’t want to say anything. But, since we got here… I’ve had a bad feeling there’s lead paint in here.”

“Fuck you, dude. Let’s just get this over with.”

They headed up the stairs, and as soon as Ryan reached the top step he was hit with a nauseating head rush, briefly disorienting him. He felt Shane’s hand on his back, keeping him from tumbling down the stairs.

“Whoa, hey man, you okay? Sit down a sec.”

Ryan sat on the top step, and Shane stood a few steps below so he was eye level with him.

“I know you’re gonna think this is bullshit, or I’m just having a panic attack, but I feel like I almost passed out.” He held his hand out to show Shane how much it was shaking.

“Even if it’s not ghosts, a panic attack is still, you know, a point of concern. You wanna take a break?”

“Just let me just catch my breath a minute.”

Shane gave him some space, setting cameras up around the hall and in the three bedrooms.

“The floorboards seem a little soft up here, so be careful,” Shane said as they groaned beneath his weight.

The first door before them was Minnie’s room, where both girls died. Ryan didn’t think he was ready for that, so he walked down the hall to Dottie’s room and gently knocked.

“Making sure everyone’s decent?” Shane asked with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s just polite, and I want to start out as respectfully as possible before you’re unleashed up here, seeing how much trouble you can stir up.”

Approaching a ratty old mattress in the corner, Ryan found a threadbare stuffed rabbit slouched in its corner.

“No fuckin’ way. Do you think that’s Dottie’s toy? No, it’s probably a squatter’s, right?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“It’s kinda weird there’s no graffiti or vandalism, if people have been in and out of here,” Ryan said, panning his flashlight across the unmarked walls.

“Not a penis or 420 in sight.”

Ryan sat on the edge of the mattress before thinking better of it, sitting cross-legged on the floor instead. Shane looked around the room, checking the small closet for demons or hobos.

“Hi there, my name’s Ryan.”

“My name’s Shane.”

“Dottie, if you’re in here, we just want to say hello, and maybe talk to you a little bit.”

He sat in silence, holding out his EVP recorder and listening for anything unusual.

“Sorry it’s a little past your bedtime,” Shane said.

“Seems like it might get kinda lonely out here,” Ryan continued. “I heard you got taken out of school. Do you miss your friends?”

Silence.

“You can come out and talk to us, if you want. If you’re hiding from something, there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. We’re pretty friendly.”

“If you don’t want to come out and see us, maybe you can whisper something in our ears,” Shane said.

“No one can reach your ears, Big Guy.”

“Please whisper eerily into Ryan’s ears. He’s real easy to scare.”

“It’s true, I’m a big scaredy cat. So feel free to come out and spook me.” Ryan’s voice started to falter at the end.

Until this point he’d just been thinking of Dottie and Minnie as the very human little girls they were, whose lives were cut tragically short. But now that he was here sitting in the dark, he suddenly remembered how fucking scary ghost kids were.

“You can also use this device to communicate with us by manipulating the energy around you,” Ryan said after waiting in the silence.

“Dottie, please use your magic river powers so we don’t have to listen to this stupid toy.” Shane cringed as the box shrieked to life, filling the small room with static noise.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Is Dottie Green here? If you are, can you talk to us?” Ryan asked.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-'_

“Is this your little, uh, little Velveteen Rabbit over here?” Shane asked as he picked up the old stuffed toy, hoping in hindsight that it wasn’t riddled with black mold, or soaked in raccoon piss.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-'_

“God, could you have picked a sadder rabbit story?”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-'_

“I’m sorry, I don’t know that many rabbit themed stories off the top of my head. Tragically, she probably never caught any Bugs Bunny cartoo_–O__W, fuck!_”

‘_Tch-tch-_eh_-tch-tch-ah-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-'_

Shane felt a jolt of pain shoot through his finger and dropped the rabbit. He looked at the bead of blood forming at his fingertip and thought, _it happened_. _It finally happened._ Some junkie hid his needles in this stuffed animal and he’d finally been accidentally injected with heroin.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_lp_-tch-tch-tch-’_

Ryan carefully picked up the rabbit and found a hat pin sticking out of its belly, showing it to Shane as though he already knew what absurd thoughts were running through his friend’s head.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“You got blood on it,” Ryan said, pointing his flashlight beam at the two bright red spots on the faded rabbit. Shane squeezed the tip of his finger and wiped it off on his jeans.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“I hope I don’t get tetanus, or some kind of flesh eating bacteria.”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“I’m turning the spirit box off.”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch__—__’_

The noise was reduced to a soft tapping. He realized it was the rain. Ryan glared at Shane while he theatrically basked in the quiet, spreading his arms out as though he were about to take a bow.

“You shouldn’t have touched that rabbit, dude.”

“If Peter Cottontail is the most dangerous thing in this house, I think that’s a win.”

They left Dottie’s room and paused in the hall while Ryan tried to decide which room he wanted to visit the least. He finally moved to the master bedroom, knocking lightly. Shane could hear him hold his breath as they entered. There were a few pieces of scrap wood and another mattress, this one covered with a rotting blanket. Shane looked out the window and turned back to Ryan when he heard his panicked squeak.

“What?”

“I saw a fucking face in the window, dude. I swear to god.”

“That was just my reflection,” Shane laughed, turning back to the window while holding the flashlight under his face, his glowing visage hovering in the window pane. Ryan held his hand over his heart and laughed his giddiness away.

“Oh thank god. You didn’t have to turn your flashlight off.”

“I didn’t turn it off, it just died, I think,” Shane said, clicking the button several times without so much as a flicker.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” Ryan chanted under his breath.

“Maybe the reason ghosts don’t talk to you because you’re a drag. Coming into every conversation with such a negative vibe. How would you feel if someone said _‘I hate this, I hate this,_’ every time they came up to you?”

“That’s rich coming from someone always telling them suck out his eyeballs and pull his bones out of his body. They’re probably like, _‘we may be dead, but that guy’s a fuckin weirdo.’_ You’re probably creeping _them_ out!”

“Look, I’ve seen The Exorcist 167 times, I know what I’m about.”

“On the other hand, if we’re trying to contact the ghost of a serial killer, if he knows how scared I am, maybe he’ll let his guard down and talk to us because he knows we’re not really a threat?”

“That scans. Let’s _jujitsu_ that fear.”

“If there’s anyone in this room who’d like to talk to us, maybe Virginia?” Ryan suggested hopefully. “O-or-or Johnny Allen? Can you give us a sign? Can you say something? Can you touch us? Maybe don’t do that, actually. Uh, maybe tap on something?”

Silence.

“Yo, Johnny Fuckface! Chop chop, we got better places to be!” Shane shouted.

“_Jesus_,” Ryan whispered while his face crimped in chagrin.

“Look at this big macho timberland miner, intimidated by a pencil neck geek like me? Ol’ Frankie Four Eyes over here?” Shane pushed his glasses back into place as if to emphasize his point.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to hit a guy with glasses?”

“He’s a fucking child murderer, Ryan. This guy likes punching down. So take a stab at it! Bust out that knife and fork, tuck in that napkin, and dig in! There’s a lot of meat on these bones!”

“What are you talking about?” Ryan laughed. “There’s no meat on those bones, you’d be the stringiest meal ever.”

“I’m lean!” Shane said with mock indignation. “I’m basically the _ibérico_ of people!”

“Pretty sure this 19th century frontier coal miner doesn’t know what _ibérico_ is, dude.”

“Whatever, shut up, fuck you,” They both snickered, trying to keep straight faces. “I bet he knows what long pork is, and I put the _long_ in long pork!” He grinned as Ryan howled with laughter. They tried to regain their composure while waiting for some kind of response.

“Alright, how about a free sample?” Shane held his arm outstretched and squeezed the tip of his finger, drawing out a bead of blood.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Ryan said. “that-that’s too far, man, come on.” He shivered, feeling that familiar prickle on the back of his neck.

“How many licks does it take to get to the center of attention, you Green Goblin? Come out and eat my ass, you child murdering fuck!”

“Jesus Christ, okay, I’m turning on the spirit box.”

“Do you think the fact that we still have to use the spirit box cuts into your ghost vortex hypothesis a little bit?”

“I don’t think anything’s been ruled out one way or the other,” he said, quickly turning on the box to cut off whatever dumb thing Shane was about to say.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“You can speak through this device, and if there’s anyone here who wants to communicate with us, can you say your name?”

‘_Tch-tch-_mucka_-tch-tch-tch-_muck_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Muck? Sounds about right,” Shane said.

“Can you say either of our names?”

‘_Tch-_chee_-tch-_cha_-tch-tch-_ko_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Cheech? Cheech and Chong? Damn, Ryan, we gotta get them on the show.”

“Can you say either of our names?” Ryan repeated.

“Shane is one syllable, buddy, can you manage? I hear you weren’t into too much of that durn book learnin’.”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_dead_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

Ryan felt like he’d been struck with cold lighting. He locked eyes with Shane, who flashed an infuriatingly cheeky grin, but didn’t say anything.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_meat_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

Ryan immediately switched off the spirit box, and looked at his favorite piece of equipment as though it had just betrayed him. In all the times he’d used the box, there was rarely an indication of tone, but this felt absolutely hostile. He looked back at Shane as though the next thing he said would make or break his sanity.

“You fucking heard that, Shane. You _fucking_ heard that.”

“Probably reading off a recipe.”

Ryan turned on his heel and walked out of the bedroom to start pacing the hall. Shane folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame, a slightly worried his friend might literally wear a hole in the floor. Ryan suddenly dug in his pocket for his holy water, clutching it over his heart and resumed pacing.

“We’re veteran ghoul hunters, and this house ain’t got anything the others don’t. Not even Raggedy Annabelle could stop the Ghoul Boys. You got this Ry.”

“My legs are jelly right now.”

“One more room, and then you can blackout wherever you want.”

“Okay, alright, okay,” Ryan sighed.

As soon as they stepped into Minnie’s room he wished he could skip ahead to the blacking out part. There was a shrill sound screaming in his ears, the vertigo returned, and he felt viciously nauseous. He leaned against the wall for support, and his knee buckled under his first step. He would have fallen had Shane not grabbed his arm. He leaned his elbows heavily on the dining room table as he took slow sips of water. He looked up at Shane sitting in the chair next to him, saying something he didn’t register. He didn’t remember coming downstairs, but those kinds of details tended to escape him in times like these.

“I can’t go back in that room,” Ryan said, wiping the sweat off his clammy brow.

“I told you it was lead paint.”

“Dude—” Ryan said before Shane held up his hands.

“Look, just sit tight, take a breather, take five. I’m gonna go upstairs, check out the bedroom, and check back in. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

Shane gave him a pat on the knee and headed upstairs to Dottie’s room, closing the door behind him. He didn’t get a chance to look around the room before Ryan collapsed, but he didn’t miss anything. The room was empty. He opened the closet, finding a stain on the floor similar to the one at the bottom of the stairs. Ryan was right about one thing. There were a few sobering reminders in this house, even if it was just mildew or wood rot. He scanned the room with his flashlight, looking for rodents, or anything else that might want to bite him. He’d put up with a lot of shit for the internet, but contracting rabies wasn’t one of them. He stood in the middle of the room with his eyes closed for a few minutes, trying to see if he could feel anything Ryan felt. He couldn’t sense anything he could remotely describe as psychic or paranormal, but he did notice wafts of some kind of off odor. It was subtle at first, but once he noticed it, the smell was hard to ignore.

“Smells like a dead animal in here. Probably a possum rotting between the walls or something.” He also picked up some kind of metallic smell as well.

“Hope you kids weren’t eating paint chips.”

He sat on the ground so any possible ghost children could reach his ears without a ladder.

“Okay, Minnie. My name is Shane, and I’m here to… visit, I guess. Here to listen if you wanna talk. Sorry about my crazy friend. Sometimes he just gets too excited. Hope it wasn’t too, uh, scary. Which would be quite ironic. You never got a chance to see the movie The Others, but… did they even have movies in 18-whatever? Probably not. You’da loved it though. Doesn’t seem like there’s much to do around here.”

He closed his eyes, listening for anything conspicuous. The sound of the rain on the roof and the windows was pleasant, but it was putting him to sleep. He could hear the floorboards creaking as Ryan paced right outside the door.

“You got ants in your pants, Ry? Are you so scared you can’t just wait downstairs?” Shane rolled his eyes and redirected his attention to the air in front of him.

“You better make an appearance, or this is gonna turn into a slumber party,” he said through a yawn.

_daddy’s really cross today_

“What the fuck was that?” Shane sat up, looking around the room. He stood in silence to listen for anything strange, but all he heard was Ryan in the hall, and the jiggle of the doorknob.

_won’t tell you twice to keep that goddamn door open_

“What, you change your mind?”

_he’s coming, hide in the closet_

He opened the door to an empty hallway.

“_Shane!”_ Ryan called from downstairs. _“I told you we shouldn’t have brought that ouija board here, you fucking dick!”_

As soon as Shane reached the top landing he felt a blow hard enough to knock the wind out of him between his shoulder blades, pitching him forward down the stairs. It felt like each step found a new body part to bounce off, and he landed in an awkward pile at the bottom.

“Fuck, dude, are you okay?” Ryan said, running to help his friend sit up.

“I knocked my fucking knee,” he said, coughing and wheezing. He could taste blood in his mouth and licked a split on his lip. Ryan found Shane’s glasses laying in three pieces across the floor, snapped at the bridge and one of the arms separated from its hinge. His chest cam was wrecked.

“I told you not to fuck around with this shit, if you kept telling ghosts to fuck you up they’d finally take you seriously!”

“It’s not _fucking_ _ghosts_, Ryan,” he snapped. “I just tripped in the dark.”

He unharnessed his broken camera and limped over to rummage around in his bag for a pack of tissues to wipe the blood away from nose and chin, and felt around for his contacts case. The slow and careful sounds of digging replaced with quicker more frantic ones suggested to Ryan the search wasn’t going well.

“_Fuck._” Shane raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. A tense silence sat between them while Ryan fidgeted.

“Do you have any, uh, tape in your bag or anything?”

They sat quietly at the dining table while Shane taped his glasses back together with gaffer tape. They sat awkwardly on his sore nose, and he maneuvered them into the most comfortable position possible, trying to ignore how they sloped to one side. Ryan scowled at the pink ouija board and moved the planchette away from the bubbly letters.

“Anything else broken?” Ryan asked.

“Only my pride.”

“As if you walked in here with any to begin with,” he ribbed.

“I guess now I can add human slinky to my resume.”

“You are building the weirdest job history. Video producer, ghost hunter, slinky man. Nation's greatest tragedy.”

“It’s a good thing I’m living in the period that I am because, and I’ve said this before, even just a decade or two ago I’d be a cripplingly dysfunctional maniac.”

“You make a good living off something that should probably be treated,” Ryan wheezed.

“Counterintuitively, you probably would have done pretty well in the early 1900s. Spiritualists were in vogue at the time. Everyone was huffing coal fumes and seeing ghosts everywhere, you’d probably have been best friends with ol’ Sarah Winchester. The only thing you’d have to worry about is Harry Houdini ruining your game.”

“Except for the whole “Yellow Peril” thing. I’d probably be stuck in some Oriental tea shop laundry house or something.”

“You might have been able to spin it into a kind of _exotic mystery_.”

“That, or burned at the stake. I think I’m content that we’re both here. And we have Netflix.”

“What were you shouting about before I came face first down the stairs?”

Shane hated stretching the tension taught again, but he could tell Ryan had been holding off until he was sure he wasn’t gonna bite his head off in frustration.

“The ouija board was moving.”

“You were using it alone down here?”

“No, it was moving on it’s own.”

“It start spelling out REDRUM or something?”

“Close enough. It said ‘RUN SAM.’”

“Who the fuck is Sam?”

“I have no idea!”

“Any of these cameras caught it?”

“My chest cam must have, but I also recorded it on my phone. I can show you that right now.”

Ryan clawed his phone out of his pocket, and fumbled it out of his hands. He picked it up quickly and pulled up the last thing he shot. His hands trembled too much to hold the phone steady, so Shane took it from him. He tried to adjust his wonky glasses and played the video. The first few seconds were shaky and blurred, and then it focused on the ouija board. The planchette darted to the letter S, over to A, and finally rested on M.

Shane played it again without saying anything.

He turned the volume up and played it a few more times. He could hear Ryan on the verge of hyperventilating in the video, and creaking from the hall upstairs.

“Hm,” Shane finally said. “That’s interesting.”

“Are you fucking joking, dude?”

“No, it’s interesting. It’ll be interesting to see what you find during editing.”

“Fuck you, I just showed you a fucking _video_ of that stupid ouija board, that _you _brought, moving on its own. What do you think we’re gonna find when we analyze it, me pulling strings or some shit? What the fuck?”

“I don’t think that,” he said calmly. “What I’m saying is an explanation for this is not immediately apparent. It’ll be interesting to see what we find under the microscope.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ strangle you to death. Shit, you’re nose is bleeding again.”

Shane wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then dug out his tissues to stop up the blood.

“You want to try using the board?”

“_No!_ What the fuck?”

“If it’s active, don’t you want to collect some more evidence to rub my nose in?”

“A ghost already did that, he tried to break your nose off your stupid face!”

“Yeah. Well. Still didn’t hit my standards, so he’s gotta do better than that.”

“A ghost has to straight up merc you, and you’re gonna have to look down and see your own stupid ghost body to acknowledge what’s right in front of you.”

“Yeah, basically,” Shane shrugged.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What do you want to do here, Ry?”

“I don’t know, it’s a little hard to think when my brain is melting.”

“We’ll flip for it.” Shane pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Heads, I’ll do your solo. Tails, we use the ouija board.”

“Goddamnit. Okay, fine.”

Ryan held his breath as Shane flipped his coin.

“Heads, fuck.”

“Thank you Jesus Christ.”

“Whatever. I’m not taking that stupid spirit box though.”

Ryan grabbed Shane’s wrist before he got too far.

“Just for one night, do me a favor and don’t tell this ghost to murder us in a bunch of horrible ways, okay? I know telling them to bust open our chest cavities and eat our hearts is your signature bit, for whatever twisted reason, but can you just chill the fuck out for one night? Please?”

For Ryan, every gust of wind was a secret message from the dead, and every nut hitting a roof were the hooves of the Jersey Devil. For Shane, it was like going through an incredibly boring carnival haunted house. The only thrill he got came from winding Ryan up, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he got such satisfaction from something with so little challenge. There was just a primal thrill in a cheap, harmless scare, but there was something about the fear radiating off Ryan tonight that wasn’t fun.

“I promise I won’t dare the ghosts to kill us.”

Ryan switch on the spirit box as Shane made his way back upstairs. He didn’t want to be alone in the silence, but he also didn’t want to hear any anyone speaking from it. A terrible catch-22 he constantly found himself in. He tried to lean into how frustrated he was with Shane’s lackluster response to his video, more so than his fear.

It was bullshit.

He couldn’t wait to review their videos and cave in the foundation of Shane’s smug certainty. That was what was so irritating, not the fact that he wasn’t swayed by evidence captured by amateur clowns fucking around for the internet, but that he was convinced he couldn’t possibly be wrong. And he was gonna have to eat the words off his own stupid Lisa Frank ouija board. He still had to figure out who Sam was. He looked at the board again and decided to hide the planchette in his coat pocket, content with what he’d already gotten.

_ ‘Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Fuck,” Ryan hissed.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Who, uh. Who was using the ouija board earlier? Who’s Sam?”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-_co_-_sho_-tch-tch-tch-_pel-pel_-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Kosh… Kosher? Kosher people? Is Sam Jewish?”

‘_Tch-_opitsa_-tch-_klem-a-hun_-tch-_klem-a-hun-ah-ha_-tch-’_

“Opera? Climbing?” Ryan was slightly comforted by his confusion than frustrated. It wasn’t quite as scary if he couldn’t understand what was being said.

‘pel-pel_-tch-_olo_-tch-tch-_pel-pel_-tch-_olo_-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Purple… Oreo? What the fuck? Did you set the mine on fire?”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_tinder-box_-tch-tch-_ha-ha-ah_-tch-’_

“Jesus Christ, I’m gonna black out. Why did you kill your family?”

‘_Tch-tch-_seen_-tch-tch-_not_-tch-tch-tch-_heard_-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Who’s Sam?”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_dead-meat_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Oh my god.”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-_no-god_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

Equipment shook in Ryan’s hands as a strange numbness crept up his fingers. His entire body started feeling so light he thought he might float out of his chair.

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

“Are you… are you going to hurt us?”

‘_Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-’_

Shane decided to give the master bedroom another shot, closing the door to block out as much of the spirit box as possible. The walls were thin and old, so it didn’t accomplish much except to take the edge off the static.

“Okay Johnny Greenhorn, time to pull out my entrails and gobble them up like spaghetti. Shane Alexander Madej is the catch of the day. Ryan Steven Bergara, on the other hand, is off the menu tonight. He’s just an appetizer anyway. The main course is right here.” He gestured elaborately.

“Chop chop, Green. It’s murder time, let’s go. But remember this offer only applies to the super sized portion. Little Guy’s off limits.”

He could feel the tickle at his nose again, drops of blood hitting the wood floor. It ran down the back of his hand and wrist as he wiped away at it.

“Jesus,” he mumbled to himself, and wondered if he broke a blood vessel. His nose was a little achy, but it didn’t feel broken. Blood didn’t usually make him too squeamish, but he was starting to feel slightly nauseous and light headed.

“There you go, Green, there’s a little taste for you,” he said before stuffing a wad of tissue up one nostril. “I think I need either a cookie or some orange slices, so I’m gonna call it a night.”

Shane had a firmer grip on the railing this time and went to find Ryan, who'd holed up in the living room near the stone fireplace. There were a few steps he thought he might go through the floor again.

“I don’t think we should sleep here tonight,” Ryan said.

“Why not?”

“I’m scared.”

“How is that different from any other investigation?” Shane asked, adjusting his glasses and folding his arms.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re just getting inside your head again, psyching yourself out. I know you don’t like hearing this, but there is an explanation for everything. Even if we’re too dumb to figure it out, things happen for a reason.”

“I just think that…” Ryan rest his elbows on his knees, tugging his hair. “I think that sometimes we’re in over our heads. Even if _we_ can’t prove one way or the other that it’s specifically ghosts. Some things are just so much bigger than us. Don’t you ever feel that? That we have no control over anything?”

“I literally feel like that all the time,” Shane said, sitting down on the solid foundation of the fireplace beside Ryan. “I mean, I say all the time if something horrible is gonna happen to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it? Why worry?”

“That’s it? That’s your whole method? _Hakuna matata_?”

“Yeah, basically. You’re a control freak, but I like letting go of the wheel. There’s something freeing about a lack of control sometimes. Besides, if you’re already in the jaws of the lion, may as well kick back and let it happen rather than stress yourself out _and_ get eaten.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Do you really want to know why I can detour around the fear part of my brain?”

“Because you’re a fucking sociopath?”

“Just listen. When I was around 13 or 14 we flew out to visit some relatives for the holidays. On the flight over we hit a little turbulence... eh, probably like mid-way through the flight. A rumble and a bump. Just enough to make you notice it. A minute passes, then _BUMP BUMP_. Everyone started looking up and kinda glancing at other passengers when a _BOOM BOOM_ rattled my back teeth, a _BUBOOM, _and it feels like the plane drops under us and people start shrieking, even after the plane levels out.

“So I’m looking around at my brother, for the stewardesses to say something, or an announcement from the captain, something. But no one’s saying anything. There was another _BUBOOM BOOM _and the plane fucking dips. People are screaming, it feels like everything’s shaking apart, total pandemonium. I’m not sure how long we were falling but I’m anticipating the ground pretty soon here.

“The thought of the moment of impact is, like, terrifying. But the fact that it’ll be over in a few seconds is kind of comforting. Just a quick crunch, and then sweet nothing. I’m not fighting against the reality that I’m gonna splatter in a minute, I’ve accepted that. So I kind of lean back in my chair, find that quiet part of my brain and relax. Then the plane evens itself out, climbs back to the appropriate altitude, and everything’s fine.”

“Holy fuck, dude.”

“Then I wake up. Turns out the whole thing was a dream.”

“That’s is the last time I let you tell a fucking story.”

“Just because it didn’t _really_ happen doesn’t mean I didn’t get anything out of it. It was sort of like, eh, a dress rehearsal. Practice death, I don’t know. The point is you have to find that special part of your brain that doesn’t give a fuck. Also ghosts aren’t real.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

“Ryan, do you really think there is a possibility that we’re not going to walk out of his house alive tomorrow?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Well, then I guess it’s up to you. We can finish this assignment, or if you really think we might be in mortal danger we can go back to the motel. Keep in mind, we’ll have to walk through the woods, in the dark, while it’s raining.”

Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his face. He sat and really thought about his options, but his mind was completely blank. A dark sphere that nothing could attach itself to, and he realized he’d been sitting there thinking about it far too long. Shane still waited patiently for his answer.

“Fuck. Let’s just finish it out,” he finally said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

They decided to set up camp in Dottie’s room. Ryan was elated to see the door had a lock, and wasn’t embarrassed to latch it. He looked around the room as Shane unrolled his sleeping bag.

“Did you put that rabbit somewhere?”

“No,” Shane said over his shoulder. “I didn’t touch it after getting stabbed. I’m lucky it wasn’t a syringe.”

“You’ll see a ghost before you accidentally get injected with heroin, you fucking lunatic. I can’t find the rabbit.”

“You need something to snuggle?” Shane bounced his eyebrows at Ryan.

“If I didn’t move the rabbit, and you didn’t move it, where did it go?”

“Maybe Minnie took it.”

“Maybe I can use the impulse control that keeps me from strangling you as a blueprint for walking away from my fear.”

“That’s the spirit,” Shane said, sitting cross-legged on his bed, plugging his phone into a mobile charger. “You get right up to that line… and then just walk away!”

“I do it every day, Big Guy.”

Shane was out almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and Ryan scrolled through his phone. After watching a few funny videos he gave into his curiosity, trying to find some connection with Sam and Johnny Allen Green. He knew it was next to nothing to go on, but he was still a little frustrated when he couldn’t find anything relevant.

The sounds of boots coming up the stairs thumped in the air, and Ryan felt like he had three heart attacks at once.

He froze, listening to it pacing up and down the hall. He wondered if this is what it felt like to be inside a plane about to crash.

“_Shane, Shane, Shane,” _Ryan whispered, slapping at his friend’s arm.

“What the fuck,” he mumbled.

“_Wake up,”_ Ryan grabbed his shoulder.

Shane rolled over and tilted his blood covered face toward Ryan, who had to slap a hand over his face to keep from screaming.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shane asked. He rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand.

“Oh fuck.”

He sat up, looking for something to wipe his face off with. He pulled a t-shirt out of his bag and wet it with his water bottle to wipe his face clean.

“It’s just a nosebleed, Ryan, calm down.”

“_Shhhut the _fuck_ up and listen,”_ Ryan hissed.

They listened to the sound of boots pacing the hall, then looked at each other. Shane started to get up and Ryan grabbed his arm roughly, keeping him seated.

“_What the fuck are you doing?”_

“_If there’s someone outside our door, I want to see who it is,”_ Shane whispered.

“_What do you think you’re gonna do, fight him in your jammies?”_ Ryan said.

Shane grabbed his phone and hit the power button. It remained dark. Ryan pulled up his keypad and his phone blinked off. He thought he might actually start crying. The boots ran down the hall and the doorknob started violently rattling. Ryan’s grip on Shane tightened, and the whole door started shaking, followed by a pounding.

_BAMBAMBAM._

Neither of them moved or breathed in the silence, until the foot steps walked down to the other door, rattling that doorknob as well.

_BAMBAMBAM_.

_I TOLD YOU TO KEEP THIS GODDAMN DOOR OPEN!_

It sounded like the door down the hall was kicked open, and Ryan’s fingers dug into Shane’s shoulder. His blood stopped in his veins when he heard the high pitched scream, and his heart plunged into the very bottom of himself when he heard the crack of the gun. It felt like he was looking down on himself, and he watched he and Shane jump at the sound.

_BOOM._

_BOOM._

Silence.

_Tell mama goodnight, cheechakos._

The boots walked calmly away from the room and down the stairs.

Neither Ryan or Shane could tell how long they sat frozen in the dark, but Shane’s shoulder was starting to hurt. He pried Ryan’s hand off and held it instead.

“_We have to get the fuck out of here,”_ Shane whispered.

“_I don’t think I can move. He might still be in the house.”_

Shane pulled away from Ryan’s grip and crept towards the door in his socks.

“_Don’t you fucking open that door!”_

He carefully put his ear to the door, listening for movement.

No creaks, no footsteps.

He turned back to Ryan, who was already slipping back into his jeans. Shane tiptoed to the window, trying to judge the fall if they had to jump from the second story. There were a lot of wet fallen logs. He thought he’d either break his legs or neck if he landed in the wrong place. He crept back to his bag to slip on his jeans and coat.

“_Do you think we should try to sneak out, or just make a run for it?”_

“_I don’t know,”_ Ryan said. _“What if he’s gone now?”_

“_The stairs lead right out the door, I think we should book it.” _

Shane stepped to the door in his socks before pulling on his boots. It took a few moments for Ryan to follow suit, clutching his heavy flashlight as a potential weapon. Shane unlocked the door and cracked it open to peek outside. It was hard to press his face near the door and keep his glasses on his face. The left lens kept threatening to fall out. He opened it a little wider and listened.

Silence.

“_Ready?”_ Shane turned to Ryan. _“On three… two… one.”_

They rushed down the hall and used the stair banister to pivot and fling themselves down the stairs, tripping over each other and tumbling into a pile at the bottom landing. Shane was able to detangle himself from Ryan, finally losing his glasses altogether in the process. He leapt to the front door yanking at handle, which didn't move.

_This is a dream, _he thought.

_This is a dream and it’s time to wake up._

He tried to will himself back into his bed, but he remained behind the locked door.

“_Ow, fuck,”_ Shane shouted, turning around while holding his ear. He couldn’t see where Ryan was, but he sensed he wasn’t that close to him.

“What happened?” Ryan said from the stair landing.

“I–I’m–I think something bit me.” His ear felt wet to the touch.

“Back door,” Ryan said.

They scrambled to the kitchen as that sickly sweet putrid smell started to thicken the sticky air. That door didn’t budge either. Shane yelped as something bit into his hand. He jumped and tore it away, clutching it to his chest.

“What happened?” Ryan asked.

“I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Try the windows.”

Ryan hopped on the counter to pull at the windows. He bashed out the glass pane with his flashlight when they didn’t move, chipping off the jagged edges when Shane started shouting.

“_Shit, fuck! Ryan! Fuck!”_ Shane was backing away from something Ryan couldn’t see. He hopped off the counter and went right through the floor.

“_Ryan!”_

He didn’t recall hitting the ground, but the screaming above him floated back to his attention as he tried to draw breath from his stunned lungs. He reached around for his flashlight, feeling some relief when his fingers curled around the metal shaft. Staggering to his feet, he tried to orient himself, and the beam of light caught the ladder stairs leading back to the kitchen.

“_Ryan!”_

He dashed up the stairs, yanking at another locked door.

“Fuck!” He slammed his fist against the door in frustration.

“_Ryan!”_ Shane’s screaming became choked and staggered.

Ryan jumped down the stairs and ran back up them, ramming his shoulder against the door. It shuddered, but didn’t move. He rammed it again, trying to compartmentalize the panic when he stopped hearing his friend at all. One more bash, and Ryan went through the splintering door. He made sure to avoid the hole he’d made in the floor, making his way through the house.

“Shane!”

Ryan’s heart was beating a mile a minute, and he almost hoped he’d run into whatever Shane ran into, certain the adrenaline alone would be enough to turn his flashlight into a Gallagher sledgehammer.

“Shane!”

He found his friend curled in a ball in front of the living room fireplace. Ryan scanned the room for anything that might leap out at him before kneeling in front of Shane, putting a hand on his shoulder. His entire face was red with blood. He groaned in pain, but at least he was alive.

“Shane? Fuck!.”

Ryan bashed out the largest window pane in the room, helped Shane to his feet and out the window, following right after.

He resisted the urge to run blindly into the woods in terror, and took a moment to focus his thoughts and lead them towards the trail they arrived from. It was still dark and the chill of the rain seeped into his bones. He was afraid he’d missed the trail until a few familiar landmarks were illuminated under his flashlight. He concentrated on a slow and steady pace, struggling as Shane leaned heavier and heavier on his shoulders. They were well into the woods when Shane’s uncertain steps began stumbling more and more. Ryan was beginning to feel the pull of exhaustion as his adrenaline wound down.

“Come on, Big Guy. You know I can’t carry all ten feet of you. You gotta move, one step in front of the other.”

“Gotta sit down a minute,” Shane mumbled through chattering teeth.

“We can’t stop, we can’t stay out here in the rain,” Ryan said, trying not to tilt counter-balancing his friend’s faltering motions, until his foot hit a root and they both went down.

Shane curled into a shivering ball almost immediately. Ryan resisted closing his eyes, afraid he wouldn’t be able to open them again. He sat up, leaning against a tree while he caught his breath.

“We gotta go. Shane. Shane. _Shane,_” he shook his shoulder trying to rouse him.

He picked up his flashlight, inspecting his friend’s injuries. His deathly pale face was lined with hot red scratches, and while the rain had washed off most of the blood on his face, Ryan could still see his nose gush like a faucet. He kneeled closer to him, noticing the bite mark on his ear. There were deep bite marks on both of his hands and wrists. He tried to roll him over to check his throat, frustrated at his resistance, but it meant he was still alive. Carefully, he felt around the cool skin of his throat with both hands, searching for any obvious injuries. He was relieved to find everything intact, but he felt tacky broken skin on the back of his neck. Ryan scanned the area, looking for a landmark.

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry when his light caught a gravestone.

“The cemetery,” Ryan wheezed. “We’re halfway there.”

“Said this would be a nice place to die,” Shane said, startling Ryan.

“Shut the fuck up, we’re getting to that car. No one is dying tonight.”

Shane didn’t move, and remained quiet. Ryan leaned over, resting his forehead against his friend’s temple, squeezing his undamaged fingers. He was exhausted. They both were. He knew he could likely last the night, even in this weather but he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t get Shane to that car.

“_We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,”_ Ryan whispered to himself.

The epitaph stood like a pillar in the center of his mind, and for the first time he felt certain neither of them would die in these woods tonight. He felt steady on the bedrock of that conviction, and pulled Shane’s arm around his shoulder, heaving both of them back up to their feet.

“I need your help, Big Guy. We can only get through this together.”

There was a more concentrated effort in Shane’s movement as they slowly marched through the forest. Ryan’s heart quickened at the sight of the coal cart that marked the entrance to the trail.

“Oh thank you Jesus fucking Christ,” Ryan sighed.

An ecstatic, almost delirious elation cascaded over him at the sight of their shitty rental car. Shane was able to remain upright, leaning against the car while Ryan reached for his keys. One pocket. The other pocket. The inner pocket. His jeans.

“No, no, no, no,” he hissed. “Fuck! Where are the fucking keys?”

A light jingle tickled his ear as Shane held them out in front of him.

“They were in my pocket,” he said with a crooked grin.

  
  


⸙⸙


	2. Acatalepsy

⸙⸙

Ryan sat in the hospital waiting room with his hand wrapped around a paper cup of burnt coffee, anxiously bouncing a knee. He’d been checked out for mild hypothermia, cleaning up some of the scrapes he’d gotten falling through the floor, and promptly discharged. He’d told the nurse it had gotten dark while they were hiking and that they’d gotten lost.

“Night hiking, in the rain, in October?” she had asked, bewildered.

Ryan told her they were from California, and she seemed to accept that answer. He had no idea what Shane would tell them. Ryan didn’t even know how hurt he really was, but suspected there was more than what he found under his cursory glance. He jumped when he heard his name called, spilling hot coffee on his hand.

“Ryan Bergara?”

“Fuck, ow. Yeah-yes?” He tossed the shitty coffee in the trash and approached the nurse.

“I have a few follow up questions, if that’s alright?” He followed her to an empty exam room. “Your friend Shane is going to be alright, but we’d like to keep him here overnight. It would be helpful if you could share what happened, whatever you remember. Even if it doesn’t seem important.”

Ryan stared at her for far too long before looking down at his shoes. He wanted to say _something_, but all the sounds seemed to be caught in his throat just below his Adam’s apple.

“I don’t know,” he finally croaked. “What did Shane say?”

“We just want to get as many details as possible,” she said kindly.

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I wasn’t there… when it happened. It was dark, and we got separated.” He risked eye contact with the nurse. “We were in Franklin. I don’t know what happened.”

“Franklin?”

“That old ghost town, out near…” he squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing between his eyebrows, trying to remember any details. “That old mining town near… uh, Black Diamond?”

“Oh, I know the one.”

“We got lost. We’re from out of town.”

“Do you know how long you were separated?”

Ryan leaned his elbows on his knees, scrubbing at his scalp. He didn’t know. Time seemed so distorted. The whole night felt so unreal, the events themselves were foggy, let alone mundane details like time and space.

“I don’t know."

What was he supposed to say? A ghost attacked us in a haunted house, but I’m sure my insurance tier doesn’t cover Acts of Satan. He couldn’t offer anything remotely helpful, and she let him leave after reminding him Shane would be discharged at noon.

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Ryan was so wired on the drive back to the motel he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to sleep, but he didn’t even remember hitting the pillow before he stirred awake sometime in the night.

He dreamed of steaming woodlands, dim light peering through forest pines. Mud burns his eyes while the forest grins. A guilty ache tolls inside him when he doesn’t feel the familiar touch to guide him out of his night terror. He lay facing the wall. That empty bed beside his felt so heavy, he didn’t need to see it.

He was always afraid of opening his eyes in the night to find something looking back at him. Tonight he was afraid to see nothing at all.

He sat in the parking lot at 10 in the morning while the window wipers beat back and forth like a metronome. He let it hypnotize him while his coffee got cold. His hands were anchored to the steering wheel to keep him from floating out of his seat. His dissociation was like a dream, as soon as he thought about it, he began to desublimate, and the harder he tried to hold onto the ether the faster it escaped, and he was left alone with the company of his dread. He was dreading noon. He was dreading seeing the consequences of the night. It crept in the shadows and loomed threateningly in his mind, but it stood still and heavy in his heart under the unblinking eye of daylight. He drove around the block in ever widening circles, trying to put some kind of distance between himself and the clock.

“Ry.”

He looked up from his seat in the waiting room. Shane stood casting a shadow before him like the arm of a sundial. He looked pale and exhausted, but breathing and alive. Ryan stood up, afraid he would vanish if he reached out to him. He had no idea what stupid expression was hanging on his face, but Shane brought him into a deep hug. They hit a drive-thru and Shane devoured his burritos with hardly a breath in between. Ryan’s food would congeal into that cold fast food no-man’s land, but he didn’t want to sit still in the car, and waited until they got back to the motel before he choked it down.

“My eyes are fucking killing me.”

“Oh shit,” Ryan said, opening the top drawer of the dresser. “I found your contacts, I’m sorry I spaced it when I picked you up.”

He handed the case over. Shane blinked a few times as they settled into place before closing his eyes again.

“Do I look as bad as I feel?” He asked from the bed.

“You look like shit.”

“That sounds about right.”

His slender features had hollowed into gauntness, and the angry red scratches contrasted brightly against the pallor of his white skin. Teeth marks hid under gauze bandages, while choking black hand prints wrapped around his throat, and a purple stormcloud of bruising shadowed his face. Ryan focused on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“They told me I should think about filing a police report,” Shane said.

“For what?”

“They think I was assaulted. Not by you, if you’re wondering.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I don’t know. I said that a lot. I told them I didn’t remember much. What did you tell them?”

“I said we got lost in the woods, like a couple of dumb SoCal idiots. That seemed good enough for them.”

“Hm.”

“Shane?”

“Hm?”

Ryan sat on the edge of the bed next to him, quiet while he tried to unstick his words. Shane pat his knee, and Ryan carefully covered the top of his hand with his own. He hung his head, waiting for something to manifest out of the silence. He didn’t know what to say.

“Get out of your head, Ry.”

“God, Shane. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry—”

“Stop blaming yourself.”

Ryan leaned his head on Shane’s shoulder, squeezing his fingers.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Here’s one for the Boogaras. It’ll make a hell of an episode.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

They both started cackling until there were tears streaming down their faces.

“God, Shane. What the fuck happened?” Ryan watched him swallow a few times before licking the dry split in his lip.

“I, uh… hm.”

He looked out the window as though he might find the answer behind the yellowing blinds, scowling at a memory before letting it go. He looked back at Ryan and shrugged.

“I gave him permission.”

“Come on.”

“Hey, something was bound to take me seriously one of these days.”

“If it’s not _my_ fault, it’s sure as shit not _your _fault,” Ryan said with a little more vinegar than he intended.

“We left all our shit back there.”

“We’ll send a gofer.”

“Send 'em with a proton pack.”

“We don’t have to talk about this now, but… Is that what happened? Was it… Green?”

“Hey, score one for the Boogaras.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I’m still kind of processing everything. It’s percolating. Right now I just… I just want to go home.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Ryan felt like he had fifteen panic attacks while reviewing their footage.

There was a big part of him that expected the cameras wouldn’t pick up anything, that there would be some kind of bullshit digital static over the active parts, or entirely corrupted. He had to have a few drinks in him before he sat down at his laptop to scrub through the footage.

_»I saw a fucking face in the window, dude. I swear to god.»  
_ _»That was just my reflection.»  
_ _»Oh thank god. You didn’t have to turn your flashlight off.»  
_ _»I didn’t turn it off, it just died, I think.»_

He paused the video and scrubbed it back a few seconds.

_»That was just my reflection.»_

Pause.

He clicked through frame by frame. As Shane turned away from the window, someone’s reflection stayed in the pane. Faint, but ominous.

_»Alright, how about a free sample?»  
_ _»Hey, hey, hey, hey, that-that’s too far, man.»_

“Shane, you fucking asshole,” Ryan growled. “You _fucking_…”

There were a lot of specifics from that night he didn’t remember, and watching them on screen coiled his stomach in some kind of nebulous anger.

_»Can you say either of our names?»  
__»Shane is one syllable, buddy, can you manage? I hear you weren’t into too much of that durn book learnin.»  
__»Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_dead_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-»_

He slammed the stop button and closed his laptop. It was going to be a long couple of days and he needed another drink.

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Shane took all his sick days after they returned to LA, but still checked in with Ryan every day with at least a couple texts. One of their producers asked him what happened in Seattle. It sounded like Shane hadn’t given them any details, so he didn’t either.

Jet lag? Flu? Food poisoning? Who could say.

The two went out for drinks a couple times that week, and Ryan came by his place a few nights. They talked about anything except work. He was privately taken aback by how fine Shane seemed. A little tired, a lot sore. But alarmingly _normal_ otherwise. It made Ryan want to scream. He joked all the time about Shane’s unflappable demeanor in the face of madness educing terror, but this was another level entirely. Ryan wondered if there really was something wrong with his brain. He knew it was irrational, but it actually made him angry. He tried to push it aside, he tried to be happy for his friend’s mental fortitude, but there was an invisible band around his chest that tightened every time he saw Shane’s phlegmatic demeanor. But also something in the back of his mind still told him it still wasn’t the right time to ask him about that night.

When Shane had used up his remaining sick days, he started cashing out his vacation days, and Ryan was getting pressed for more answers at work. He tried being evasive, he tried being vague, finally he started getting angry.

“What am I, his fucking keeper?”

It wasn’t helpful, and he knew conversations were happening behind doors on higher floors. Something had to give, and he headed over to Shane’s place after work. Somehow trying to pretend he wasn’t anxious wound Ryan up into an even tighter ball of fidgety stress. He supposed that wasn’t exactly out of character for him. Maybe he needed to find some of that Ricky Goldsworth energy.

Shane greeted him like nothing was amiss, but it was still hard for Ryan to ignore the blotchy pattern on his face, the dark finger marks around his throat, or the crusty red halos of human bites still healing on his exposed skin. It took a lot of steam out of Ryan’s ire. For some reason the detail that Shane’s sleeves were buttoned at the wrist stuck out to him. His sleeves were usually rolled up to his elbows. Or where they? He couldn’t remember, and tried to tell himself it didn’t really matter, that he didn’t need to know what was hiding under the fabric of his shirt. He tried to tell his inner thoughts to stop being so goddamn nosy.

“You alright, man?” Shane asked.

“Yeah, sorry. Just, uh. You know. A lot on my mind. As usual.”

“You hungry? I was gonna order something.”

They sat around the table scarfing the contents of several paper Chinese food boxes. Ryan’s laptop sat off to the side.

“People have been missing you at work. They hope you’re okay. Since, you know, you kinda dropped off the face of the earth all the sudden.” He stared at his fried rice, poking at a piece of chicken with his chopsticks.

“That’s nice of them,” he said with infuriating sincerity.

“They’ve been asking me about it. I don’t really know what to tell them.”

“Let the mystery sizzle,” Shane said, tipping his chair back on two legs.

“It’s not sizzling, it’s burning,” Ryan said more curtly than he intended.

Shane still didn’t seem phased.

“I’ve been, um. Working on the edits, for the video. But I thought I ought to ask if you even… would you be comfortable with airing what happened?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well. I brought over my laptop. Would you mind looking over some of it with me? If you’re not up to it, that’s totally fine, it’s no big deal,” Ryan immediately backpedaled.

“Sure, that’s fine,” he said casually.

Ryan stared at him, having expected a harder time convincing him to work on their assignment. He wondered if it was that easy, what the hold up coming back to work was. There was some dull feeling growing in the center of him that was too far to identify yet. He shoved that thought away as they relocated to the couch.

“You want a beer?” Shane asked as Ryan set his laptop on the coffee table, queuing up the videos.

“Uhh, yeah, sure.”

Shane popped the top off a couple of cold bottles, handing one to Ryan before settling himself comfortably on the couch, adjusting his new glasses, and propping a leg on the coffee table as if they were about to just hang out and watch Netflix.

“You sure you’re okay, Ry?”

“Yeah, yeah. You know me, these videos tend to rattle me. Even the, uh, less active ones. Are you okay? Because, we can do this another time if you want.”

“You already got me here on the couch. Let’s see what you got.”

Ryan stared a beat longer before playing the first clip. The pair were in the kitchen bullshitting about sensing energy. Shane rapped five rhythmic knocks on the door leading to the cellar.

_»Shave and a haircut.»_

There was a very soft _tap tap_ following a minute later, that definitely sounded like a pine cone hitting the roof.

“Come on, Ryan.”

“I-I’m just starting with the small stuff, you know. Working up to Crazy Town.”

“Alright.” Shane took a sip of his beer, patiently waiting for the next clip.

_»Yo Johnny! If you’re up for a late night snack, why don’t you turn that black light off, huh?»_

Ryan paused the video.

“There isn’t anything that the cameras are picking up in the kitchen, but I wanted to ask if you smelled anything weird in there, or if it was just my imagination?”

“Yeah, it smelled like a dead animal in there. There was probably an owl decomposing in the chimney or something.”

_»You’re fucking dead inside if you don’t feel weird in this house right now.»  
_ _»I didn’t want to say anything. But, since we got here, I’ve had a bad feeling that this is lead paint.»  
_ _»Fuck you, dude. Let’s just get this over with.»_

Ryan paused the video just as his image started to sway on the landing of the stairs.

“I think I saw something here, when I thought I was gonna keel over. Do you see that… that kind of dark shadow? It’s sort of floating over the stairs here?”

“Roll it back and let it play.”

_»Whoa hey man, you okay? Sit down for a sec.»_

Pause.

“I’m gonna go with dust on that one,” Shane said, quirking an eyebrow above the frame of his glasses. “What are you wasting my time with these softballs for?” he said with mock frustration.

“Okay, okay, that’s just the aperitif!” Ryan grinned.

It was almost perverse how normal this all suddenly seemed, like they didn’t know where it was going.

_Get out of your head, Ry._

The static of the spirit box hissed over the following clip as Shane was holding that stuffed rabbit, pricking his finger. Ryan snuck a look at Shane, who conveyed no particular reaction.

_»__Tch-tch-_eh_-tch-tch-ah-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch-__»  
__»__Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_lp_-tch-tch-__tch-__»_

“Did you hear that?”

“No.”

Ryan played it back.

_»__Tch-tch-_eh_-tch-tch-ah-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch-__»  
__»_ _Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-lp-tch-tch-_ _tch-_ _»_

“That. It sounds like _‘eh-lp.’_ I think it’s saying _‘help’_.”

“Maybe it’s the rabbit.”

“No, really. Does that sound like _‘help’_?”

“It’s not terribly convincing.”

“You don’t take time off being a Shaniac, do you?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

Shane didn’t find the face in the window particularly convincing either.

“Can you prove definitively that’s not a ghost face?”

“Can you prove definitively that’s not pareidolia?”

“What?”

“Pareidolia is the mind seeking patterns in random stimuli. Seeing faces in things like electrical outlets, or Jesus in a pancake. The brain is hardwired to look for faces, even when they’re not really there.”

“Fuck, I can just tell, _I can just tell_ this is gonna be your little cheat card now. Any time we find anything, you’re just gonna say pario–what?” He hated the stupid smug grin Shane was pointing at him right now.

“Yeah, every time you say ‘_cAn YoU pRoVe It’S nOt AlIeNs?’_ I’m gonna make you prove it’s not pareidolia.”

God, the normalcy felt so fucking good right now. He wished he could just pause this moment, and stretch it out as long as possible. They debated a few other less than convincing noises before coming up to the moment things started to get truly weird. Ryan folded his arms across his chest and watched the screen with a tight expression as Shane bled out his finger in Green’s bedroom, baiting him. He looked at Shane out of the corner of his eye, and his face remained relaxed and neutral.

_»You can speak through this device, and if there’s anyone here who wants to communicate with us, can you say your name?»  
__»__Tch-tch-_mucka_-tch-tch-tch-_muck_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch__»  
__»Muck? Sounds about right.»  
__»Can you say either of our names?»  
__»__Tch-_chee_-tch-_cha_-tch-tch-_ko_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch-__»_

Pause.

“Sounds like nonsense to me,” Shane said, draining his beer.

“I didn’t understand it at first either. I had to watch a lot of clips over and over before I pieced it together. He calls us _Cheechako_. I’d never have picked that up if… if not… well, it comes up again later. _Cheechako_ is Chinook Jargon. It was pidgin language used by traders and frontiersmen in the Pacific Northwest. _Cheechako_ means ‘newcomer,’ but it was kind of a derisive term, like tenderfoot, or _greenhorn_. Get it?”

“Hmmm,” Shane said, a little more interested. “People used to throw greenhorn in his face, so I guess he’s throwing it right back?”

“Right, so I started paying closer attention to the sounds I thought were nonsense. I couldn’t figure out all of them, but I translated what I could. When we asked who he was, he said _Muckamuck, _which refers to like, a head honcho kinda thing. Sitting at the head of the table. It literally translates to _‘Big Feed.’_”

“Johnny A-hole has a sense of humor,” Shane snorted.

“Yeah,” Ryan said in a faltering voice. He hesitated over the spacebar, then hit play.

_»Can you say either of our names?»  
__»_ _Shane is one syllable, buddy, can you manage? I hear you weren’t into too much of that durn book learnin.»  
__»__Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_dead_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch-__»  
__»__Tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-_meat_-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-tch-__tch-__»_

Pause.

Every time he heard that recording, Ryan felt tears prickling his eyes. Somehow each time it was as bone chilling as the first. He didn’t pause the clip to necessarily have a discussion as much as just needing a quick moment. He looked over at Shane, whose expression had not changed in the slightest.

“Hmm, juicy,” he said. “That’s a juicy one.”

Ryan couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just played the next clip. Shane walking into Minnie’s room, chatting up the air about the future technology of film in the dumbest way possible. He turned his attention to the creaking steps pacing outside the door.

_»You got ants in your pants, Ry? Are you so scared you can’t just wait downstairs?»_

Pause.

“You heard that, you responded to that. You know I was downstairs. The static cam in the hall shows that no one was outside that door.”

“Hm.”

Why was he pitching this to Shane, as if he didn’t know exactly what was going on? As if he didn’t know he was gonna get tossed down a flight of stairs and torn up like an old chew toy? Was this some kind of game? Frustration was creeping in again, but the target was still too broad. He couldn’t pinpoint what specifically was upsetting him so much.

_»daddy’s really cross today»  
__»What the fuck was that?»  
__»won’t tell you twice to keep that goddamn door open»  
__»What, you change your mind?»  
__»_he’s coming, hide in the closet»

“You hear that? You heard it in the room. Those EVPs. Tell me what the fuck they just said.”

Shane looked him in the eyes with that passive expression that was eating away at Ryan's stomach lining, but said nothing. Ryan played the rest of the clip, and Shane tumbled down the stairs again. He rewound it, floating him back up to the top, and paused it just as his feet left the ground.

“What the fuck is that?” Ryan asked heatedly, pointing at the solid silhouette of a man shoving Shane forward. The calmer Shane stayed, the angrier Ryan got.

“You know what the fuck was happening right before this? That stupid fucking ouija board of yours was spelling out _RUN SAM_. You know who the fuck SAM is? Why don’t you take a crack at it, smartass?”

“Shane Alexander Madej.”

Ryan was ready to blow a gasket. He could feel the red creeping up his face. He rocketed to his feet, slamming his laptop closed. He ran his fingers roughly through his hair, pulling his hairline back with his palms, and paced around the living room. He stopped and looked at Shane, who sat on the couch, cool as a cucumber. Ryan was about to say something when he stopped and started pacing again.

“You can understand why I thought all that walking around in the hall was you,” he deadpanned. Ryan almost felt like decking him.

“What the fuck is your problem? What the _fuck _is _wrong _with you? Are you playing some kind of fucked up game with me? Because, I don’t know if _you’re _having fun, but I sure as fuck am _not!_” Ryan was shouting at this point. He still didn’t know why.

“What do you want me to say?”

“How about acknowledging what’s going on here? What we went through?”

“You caught a Casper. Congrats.”

“You’re such a fucking robot. Are you even human? There’s just no emotions here. Lieutenant Commander Fucking Data over here, except the robot wasn’t a _fucking prick!_”

“He was an android, not a robot.”

“I’m gonna… I swear to fucking _god_,” Ryan said storming over as if to reach out for Shane’s collar before thinking better of it and running his hands through his hair again.

“You _heard_ that shit. You heard _voices_, you heard _steps_, something _shoved_ you down the fucking stairs. You saw the ouija board spelling out _your _fucking initials. But you’re such a smug piece of shit who has to be right, all the time. You don’t even give a shit about being right, as long as you’re being contrarian. You saw all this shit, and you STILL went upstairs and told the ghosts to come fuck us up!”

“I very considerately left you off the menu.”

“You reckless son of bitch. You don’t give a shit about anything. You put both of us in danger just because you’re a professional _asshole_.”

“I believe that is my job. You’re the one who brought us to a haunted house.”

Shane stood up and looked at Ryan with an expression that was almost bored. Ryan didn’t think he’d ever been angrier in his life.

“Well this has been fun, Ry. I hope our next movie night is as colorful,” Shane said, picking up the empty beer bottles and heading towards the kitchen.

Ryan lashed his hands out, grabbing Shane roughly around his arm and shoulder, immediately regretting it as he yelped in pain, dropping to his knees. Ryan let go, taking a few steps back as his friend clutched at his arm, bending forward until his forehead touched the floor. Ryan could see spots of red blooming under his shirt where he’d grabbed him.

“Fuck, man, god, I’m sorry,” he knelt next to him, at a complete loss.

Ryan felt like he was spiraling in a free fall. He wished he could take his hasty actions back, take his anger back, take the hurt back. Take that whole night back. He watched Shane’s shoulders start to tremble as choppy breaths escape him, and tears roll down his nose. Ryan hesitantly touched a feather light hand between his shoulder blades. When Shane didn’t flinch or pull away, he rest it there firmer, and Ryan felt like they’d suddenly returned to those woods. He helped Shane back to his feet and anxiously hovered at his elbow.

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated in a shaky voice.

“I’ll be right back,” Shane mumbled.

“Can I do anything to help?” Ryan asked.

“It's fine. I’ll be right back,” he said before disappearing into his bedroom.

Ryan rapped his knuckles against his forehead, his entire body tightening like a coiled spring. He felt so out of control, and he didn’t know how to set it right. He picked up the bottles Shane had dropped and started cleaning up the mess they’d made in the kitchen, putting the leftovers in the fridge. When there were no more small tasks he looked around the room, lost in the small space. He felt like a wild thing, and imagined that those sinister pines would start growing right out of the carpet, the enmity of night swallowing them up all over again. He sat back down on the couch, suddenly feeling cold.

Shane eventually returned, having changed into his black turtleneck. He stood before the threshold of the door, looking in the room, but not at anything. He looked as lost as Ryan felt.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah.”

“No, really.”

“No. Are you?”

“No.”

Shane sat next to Ryan at a polite distance that may as well have been the span of the Pacific Ocean.

“I didn’t mean any of those things,” Ryan said.

“I know. But you weren’t wrong.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I gave him permission. I got what I kept asking for. You got your ghost.”

“This isn’t what I wanted.”

“I know.”

“What are we gonna do?”

Ryan watched Shane absently lick at his cracked lip and shrug. He looked exhausted, and Ryan wondered if it had just come on, or if he’d really been so focused on their stupid video that he just hadn’t bothered to notice. He was so convinced Shane was fine.

He’d been avoiding work, but he was fine.

He was quiet, but he was fine.

He was numb, but he was fine.

Ryan called him a robot, but he was fine.

At what point had their bit become a shield? When had that shield become a mask?

“It’ll be a hell of a series finale.” Shane finally said.

“What do you mean? Wait, what?” Ryan stuttered.

“I told you man. I see a ghost, I’m done. I told you I’d never have done any of this shit if I thought it was real. We were going on road trips, seeing the country, hanging out. Daring each other to go in haunted houses, telling campfire stories. Playing pretend. I thought you believed in ghosts the way most people do. Urban legends you could suspend disbelief for, fall into _possibility _of. It was supposed to be fun. Look at me.” Shane held out his torn up hands.

“This isn’t fun. If you knew then what we know now, you’re crazier than I am.”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said after a while.

“Maybe… maybe I thought it was like the true crime. People get murdered all the time, horrible things happen to people, all the time. But you just don’t think it’s gonna happen to you. Not really. It’s so much bigger than you, that you’re just too small a target for that cosmic dartboard.”

They sat in lonely silence, caught under the weight of being acknowledged by catastrophe.

“What are you gonna do?” Ryan finally asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back to Chicago and run a fucking hot dog stand.”

“You’re just gonna quit?”

“Yeah, Ryan. I’m gonna quit. And you should too. You’re so fucking traumatized and you don’t even know it. Do you think blacking out all the time is normal? That hypervigilance is just nerves? Night terrors every time you close your eyes? Assflash, newshole, it fucking isn’t.”

The last of his steam evaporated, and Shane leaned over to lay on Ryan’s lap, tucking his long legs on the couch, and let his eyes slip closed. Ryan pulled his glasses off his face and set them on the side table. He rest his forearm on Shane’s shoulder and let his fingertips absently move through the hair behind his ear. He only just noticed the white lines that started to thread at his temple.

⸙⸙

Ryan wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but he was the first of the two to wake. He untangled himself from Shane to take a piss and make coffee. He called in sick and had cold Chinese food for breakfast. He brought two cups of coffee back to the living room, and lifted Shane’s legs up from the other side of the couch to sit down, letting them rest on his lap. Shane reached for the remote and turned on Frasier.

“I don’t know what’s to like about this show, but it makes sense that you’d like it. It does kinda grows on you, though.” Ryan said after a couple episodes. "It’s so weird to see Abe Sapien and Hank McCoy as brothers.” 

“I guess you could call them blues brothers,” Shane said slyly.

“I can’t believe that just came out of your stupid face. I hate you so much. And what the fuck is tossed salad and scrambled eggs?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Absolutely not.”

It was eerie how the Space Needle kept looming in the background. A very visible elephant in the room. Ryan started to wish they were watching anything else. He checked his messages and Shane ignored a few calls, not even sparing his phone a glance. Eventually Shane got up to get some leftovers, and Ryan grabbed the remote to switch it over to MST3K.

“Which one is this?” Shane asked through a mouth full of gyoza.

“The werewolf one.”

“‘_Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day,__’_ in bed,” Shane read after cracking open his fortune cookie.

"I’ll be sure to mark that on my calendar.”

“‘_You're working under a slight handicap. You happen to be human,’_ in bed. That’s humbling,” Ryan laughed, stuffing his cookie in his mouth.

“Ghoul in the streets, human in the sheets? No necrophiles in your future,” Shane smirked.

“Can we talk about the Franklin video?”

“Hm.”

“Do you want to scrap it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we can cut it if you want, we can figure something else out, get Matt to throw together a conspiracy theory video, whatever. It’s your call.”

“You finally caught a ghost, and you wanna throw that out? The Boogara’s final triumph over the Shaniacs?

“I’m serious. I’m not gonna exploit your fucking assault for views.”

“Don’t call it that,” Shane said tensely.

“Okay, sure. But, I mean, do you know what I mean?”

“The only thing I’ve been thinking is that everyone’s going to think we faked it.”

“That never occurred to me,” Ryan said, feeling a sudden sink in his stomach.

“I don’t think anyone is going to believe us. They’re gonna think we shot a fucking episode of Ghost Adventures.”

“Holy shit dude, what if Zak Bagans has been telling the truth the whole time?” Ryan flashed an incredulous grin.

“This is truly the darkest timeline.”

“But do you really think people are gonna think that you did this to yourself?”

“I’m sure everyone will think I threw myself down a flight of stairs before they buy a ghost vortex supercharged a cannibal murder ghoul, because it still sounds stupid as fuck.”

“Yeah, but if _you’re_ saying it, you don’t think that’ll count for anything?”

“Gimme a break, Ryan,” Shane said, massaging his brow. “I think you’re giving me and our audience way too much credit here.”

“Are you… do you… I mean… do you still want to leave?” Ryan internally cringed at how small and needy his voice sounded.

“I don’t know,” Shane sighed. “I’m honestly still processing all this shit, but the idea of going back into another haunted house doesn’t immediately appeal to me. I mean I know I said in almost episode I wanted a ghost to come fuck me up, and I’m morally obligated to eat my words here—”

“You didn't deserve this,” Ryan interrupted quietly.

Shane pushed his glasses aside to rub his eyes and sigh, and they both sank into another silence. The credits were rolling before either of them made another move. Shane turned the TV off and put their dishes in the sink while Ryan started packing up his laptop.

“Put the episode together,” Shane finally said. “Use whatever footage you want, I trust your judgment. We’ll figure it out from there.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

He brought Ryan in for a quick hug that turned into a long one, Ryan squeezing him just a little too hard, and Shane leaning in a little too much. Ryan felt like he could suddenly feel Shane’s exhaustion seeping into him, and he felt guilty for hounding him all over again.

“I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry about what I said. I’m sorry about everything.”

“Don’t take all the credit, Ry.”

“You’ll text me if you need anything?”

“Yeah.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Ryan was almost surprised when Shane called him, but part of him was also expecting it.

Neither of them said anything, they just lay quietly in the dark together until drifting back to sleep.

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


Shane returned to work in the most dramatic way possible, it bordered on the theatrical.

Dressed head to toe in black, he wore a stylish silk scarf around his neck, his fingerless gloves, and dark sunglasses. Ryan wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed, but he could see Shane had applied concealer to his face, hiding his bruises. The healing cut on his lip and above his brow added just enough of a rugged mystique to this visual performance. It was insufferable, and Ryan wasn’t sure if he was more outraged or impressed at how effective it was with their coworkers.

If anyone asked where he’d been or what had happened, he would slip them a tight little smile and say, “for now that remains… unsolved.”

Ryan suspected he was also the only one who noticed the way Shane stumbled into his seat. He reached over and snatched Shane’s sunglasses, seeing how red his eyes were before he grabbed them back and sat them on his pointy nose.

“Are you drunk?” Ryan hissed.

“For now that remains—”

“Cut the shit.”

“I might be a little hungover.”

“Unfuckingbelievable. What’s in this drink?”

“Just tea, buddy.”

Ryan took a sip to confirm, glad he didn’t taste anything but Earl Grey.

Shane reviewed a rough cut of the episode with Ryan, who had really been thrown a curve ball with the suggestion that their evidence could be beyond belief. He tried to strike an appropriate balance while trying to get over the indignation of it all. At the same time, he knew Shane was probably right. The back of his throat was chalky with antacids, given the confirmation of fiction being accepted before fact was wearing at Ryan’s stomach.

“You know the audience is gonna love that ouija board,” Shane said with a kind of self satisfaction that lent itself to Ryan grinding up another Tums in the back of his teeth.

“Where is that thing, anyway?”

“I think it’s still in my bag. I haven’t actually unpacked it yet. I haven’t really gone through it, I sort of tossed it in the coat closet after the gofer dropped it off,” Shane admitted.

Ryan had strategically peppered in some EVP recordings that were likely nothing more than environmental sounds, employing the domino theory of suspending the audience’s disbelief. He knew they’d have to work up to the real stuff. Shane knew this too, but it didn’t hamper his ability to perform his skeptic jackass routine, nor Ryan’s insistence they could be ghost sounds during their VO sessions. He was on the fence about including Shane’s blood offering, but Shane told him he ought to keep it in. He said it would probably benefit them to show off how much of their evening was the consequence of legitimate dumb fuckery.

“It’s very on brand. If anyone’s gonna break all the horror movie rules, it’d be me,” he said.

It was a good lead up to the genuine EVPs that Shane had recorded. Somehow it was the distinction between the two voices that was the most rattling to Ryan. The clear contrast between the small girl’s voice, and the sinister growl of her father. It still didn’t seem to elicit any particularly strong reactions in Shane, despite his acceptance of their authenticity. Nor did the full recording of the ouija board spelling out RUN SAM, but the hard cut between him falling down the stairs and the image of his taped glasses somehow got a laugh.

Ryan thought a lot about what to do with the EVPs that woke them up that night. They were so upsetting that he could barely listen to them in the middle of the day. Every time he heard the screaming and the gunshots his heart stopped and his entire body felt sick. He suspected a lot of that had to do with the endless series of mass shootings that had become the social wallpaper for everyone in the US since 1999. In the end, he decided it was too triggering due to circumstances beyond the dead walking the earth, and omitted it from the cut. The footsteps, the banging on the door, that was all terrifying enough.

_»_ _I TOLD YOU TO KEEP THIS GODDAMN DOOR OPEN!_ _»  
__»_ _Tell mama goodnight, cheechakos._ _»_

It was about this point Shane stopped responding one way or the other. He watched the cut with detached silence, and either didn’t notice or didn’t care when Ryan kept looking at him. The static cams didn’t pick up much of the blood, except for Shane’s nosebleeds, and Ryan was filled with an abstract horror when he watched himself disappear through the kitchen floor, and wasn’t seen again on camera for several minutes. At the time he hadn’t known how long he’d been in the basement while Shane was being attacked, being thrown around by a silhouette in the dark. Ryan ultimately omitted most of that even from the rough cut.

_ »Ryan!»  
_ _»Ryan!»_

“Shane? Shane?”

“Looks good, let me know when you need VO,” Shane said, not feeling the hand on his shoulder, abruptly leaving the editing room.

“Fuck.”

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


“Maybe you should talk to Father Thomas?”

_ “Why?”_

“He has direct experience with this kind of thing.”

_ “Maybe _you_ should talk to him, Ry.”_

“I’ve thought about it. I thought about what you said, about the blackouts and memory loss. And the nightmares. You’re right, it’s not normal. I think I didn’t want to believe our dumb little web show about two idiots ghost hunting would effect me this much.”

Ryan sat slightly propped up in bed, tuning his guitar while his phone sat on the nightstand. Another late night phone call with Shane, bleeding into the am. They’d been calling each other nearly every night, sometimes talking, sometimes saying nothing. Ryan was chronically exhausted, but his nightmares would have kept him awake either way. Shane hadn’t mentioned any, and he didn’t ask. Anything Shane wanted to tell him he would volunteer, or else he’d shut down. Ryan had stumbled through that trial and error several times.

_ “Forget what I said about Father Thomas, you should go to, you know, an actual therapist.”_

“What about you? Have you thought about talking to anyone?”

_ “What am I gonna say? I got my ass beat by a hungry ghost? You think they have a support group for that? Unless that shrink is Chinese, you’ll be visiting me in the fucking psych ward. I’m on my own with this one, Ry.”_

“That’s why it might be a good idea to talk to Father Thomas, because it’s literally his job to deal with this kinda stuff.”

_ “I don’t need to go to confession to hear ‘I told you so.’ What a bunch of fucking idiots we’d look like, doing all the shit he told us not to and then, oops! Got what I asked for, like a dummy.”_

“I don’t think he’d judge you, I think he’d want to help you. It doesn’t even have to be him, we could find someone who doesn’t know you if that would make it easier.” Ryan could sense he was treading on thin ice.

_“Drop it, Ryan,”_ he snapped. _“Besides, it’s not like—fuck!”_

There was a clattering followed by silence.

“Shane? Shane?” Ryan grabbed his phone.

_ Call ended at 3:24 AM_

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Ryan was knocking on Shane’s door.

_RAP RAP RAP RAP._

He put his ear to the door.

_RAP RAP RAP RAP._

He pulled out his spare key and let himself in.

“Shane? You here? Are you okay?”

Ryan found him pacing in his living room, sweat rolling down his red face and blood pouring out of his nose as he ran his hands through his hair, choking through rough staccato breaths. He didn’t seem to notice Ryan until he put a hand on his shoulder and quickly swiped it away.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he gasped.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ryan said, holding his hands up.

“I think I’m having a fucking heart attack,” he said, rubbing his chest. “I can’t fucking breathe, I can’t breathe, fuck.”

“It’s okay, just try to take a slow breath, even a small one.”

_ “I can’t fucking breathe.”_

“Do you want to go to the hospital?”

_“Yes, fuck, my fucking throat is closing,”_ he choked.

“Okay, I’ll take you right now. It’s gonna be okay. Just try to breathe. You’ll be okay.”

Ryan didn’t touch his friend until his shaking legs started to collapse under him, and he reached out for Ryan’s arm. He put his arm around his shoulder and helped him to the car, and Ryan was nearly overwhelmed with a nauseating sense of deja vu. He tried to stay ahead of his tunnel vision as he sped to the ER, praying he wasn’t gonna get pulled over. Providence allowed them uninterrupted passage, and soon enough Ryan found himself in another waiting room, shaking one leg while a high pitched whine screamed through his ears.

He knew Shane wasn’t having a heart attack, that he wasn’t dying. He was very familiar with the signs of a panic attack, having had a few himself. He didn’t know if Shane ever had, and trying to talk him through one would probably have just made it worse.

Still, a nagging little voice in the back of his mind hissed that it was totally possible he was having a heart attack. Maybe what happened in Franklin had finally caught up with him, that the darkness had been hiding inside like some kind of demonic contamination, waiting to strike.

“Shut the fuck up, Bergara,” he said, rubbing his brow.

He knew he was on the verge of his own meltdown, and went through his grounding techniques, breathing in and out, slow and deep. Sometimes he appreciated how slippery time was, as the moment between wringing his hands in the waiting room and clutching them on the steering wheel had condensed to the blink of an eye, and he listened to himself ask a sedated Shane if he wanted to go back to his own apartment, or somewhere else.

They sat quietly next to each other on Ryan’s couch, and he tried not to stare at the still healing rips and tears up and down his friend’s thin arms, sticking out of his slightly damp t-shirt. Ryan felt guilty all over again remembering yanking at his arm. Dried blood stained his collar and in drips down the front. He let Shane borrow the biggest t-shirt he could find, and threw a heavy quilt blanket around his shoulders when he started to shiver.

“I thought I was having a heart attack,” Shane said sluggishly.

“I know,” Ryan said, handing him a bottle of water.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Shane leaned on Ryan’s shoulder as his eyelids grew heavier.

“It’s okay. Come on, Big Guy, you don’t have to crash on the couch. You can take the bed.”

He guided his heavily medicated friend upstairs, letting him slip under the covers. He turned to leave when Shane caught his hand, so he curled up next to him instead.

⸙⸙

Shane leaned groggily over the breakfast table, still wrapped in Ryan’s quilt, enduring that sedative hangover. Ryan set a cup of coffee in front of him.

“It was the rabbit,” Shane mumbled.

“What rabbit?”

“That fucking rabbit. From the farmhouse. It was in my bag.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I finally started unpacking that bag, and it was stuffed in there. I just…” he rubbed his dry eyes. “I’m sure the gofer put it in there, thought it was yours or mine. I don’t know, I just started freaking out.”

“I’d be freaking out too, dude. What did you do with it?”

“I don’t know, I think I just dropped it or something. I’m putting that thing in a fucking barbecue when I get home.”

“Can I take it?”

“Why the fuck?”

“You’re gonna think this is dumb, but I want to get it blessed.”

“Yeah, alright, whatever,” he sighed.

Shane hesitated outside his apartment door for a moment before letting them in. He clenched and unclenched his sweating palms and swallowed dryly. Ryan could see him trying not to shake.

“Where is it?”

“In the coat closet.”

Ryan grabbed the rabbit while Shane went to shower and change. Ryan decided to grab the stupid pink ouija board in his bag as well, taking them out to his car. He looked at the sad stuffed thing for a moment before pulling his bottle of holy water out of the glove box, and poured some over the rabbit, making sure to hit the dry brown blood stains before throwing it and the board in his trunk.

Shane was still in the shower when he came back up, and Ryan camped on the couch, turning on some Next Gen while he waited for him, and sent an email to Father Thomas from his phone. His anxiety over being scolded for their reckless behavior was dwarfed next to his fear of this souvenir from the worst night of their lives.

Was Unsolved still worth all this trouble?

Was he ready to die for the internet?

Was he ready to take Shane with him?

  
  


⸙⸙

  
  


“Hello, and welcome to another episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved Postmortem, a show where we answer your most pressing questions about the most recent episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved, which was The Franklin Farmhouse Horrors. All the questions we’re answering today came from you guys via our Buzzfeed Unsolved Facebook page, and our Buzzfeed Unsolved Instagram page, as well as directly on the video on BUN,” Ryan introduced.

“Subscribe,” Shane said.

“So, uh, this was some episode. We talked about this during the editing, but there was some concern that we were gonna get tweets accusing us of jumping the shark here. And we were right! Got a lot of Shaniacs out there asking what we’re trying to pull here, and I love it. Anytime that happens, I consider that a personal win,” Ryan said, trying to keep the mood light. He looked over at Shane, anxiously.

Shane had decided to forgo his scarf and turtleneck, his gloves, and he didn’t wear any makeup to hide his bruises. Ryan almost felt more nervous about it than Shane appeared to be. On the one hand, he was impressed with Shane’s willingness to present this level of vulnerability. There was something frighteningly naked about it. On the other hand, he was worried he might regret it later, or it might trigger something. The way Shane was clutching his cup of tea hadn’t escaped Ryan, and he pretended he couldn’t smell the alcohol in it. He assured Shane several times before they started filming that if he changed his mind at any point, they could stop and reshoot.

“I have to admit, I might have fumbled the Shaniac flag in this episode,” he said, adjusting his glasses. The red rings of teeth marks, though healing, were still very visible on his hands.

“Sorry guys.”

“In all seriousness, this was, um. It was a difficult episode to shoot. There were some injuries. I think you can, uh, see that. I’m always pretty vigilant in my search for evidence but… I never want it to be at the expense of anyone’s safety. Especially my friends. The Boogaras might have collected some points this episode, but it came with, um. It came with a price tag I’m not sure was worth it.” Ryan’s eyes darted between Shane and his own hands several times.

“Maybe we can get Steven Lim and Andrew Ilnyckyj to weigh in on that,” Shane said with some levity. “Ryan has always had enough integrity to admit when things aren’t exactly popping, and it’s my turn to do the same. Our viewers always said they couldn’t wait to see the Shanester get choked out by a ghost and, uh, well I guess Christmas came in October this year."

Ryan’s throat constricted dryly. He’d given Shane the option of tapping out on this one, but he started to consider he might be the one needing to hit the emergency escape.

“Let’s get into some questions,” Ryan said, looking through his phone. He scrolled past a lot of really personal or insensitive questions, some of the real hard balls, or anything that just hit him the wrong way.

“Alright, staring with Gramnation, Unhinged_Corvid:

You went to Washington State and didn’t even find any vampires? They’re hard to miss up there, especially in the sunlight. #L #Boogara #FuckTheHotdoga.

"Joke’s on you, there’s no sunlight in Washington State.”

“Well, now that we’ve proved ghosts are real, maybe we can expand to other cryptids? Finally catch Mothman,” Ryan said with a half hearted laugh. "Over to Facebook with Laurin Klement:

Holy shit you guys, this ep was friggen intense. Gotta admit, I watched this one with the lights on. Did you guys stay all night in that house or did you bail? The ending was a little ambiguous. Glad you’re both okay! #Boogara #LoveYouTooShane #Scarred4Life.

"Yeah, so, um. We did have to bail on spending the night. It became genuinely unsafe to stay there the whole night, so we had do leave.”

“That’d be my fault,” Shane said, taking a sip from his mug and raising his hand. “Real strong wind in that house.”

“You’re the worst,” Ryan laughed.

“Back over to Gramtown from 8InchNail:

I have to say I’m usually a Shaniac, but even I wouldn’t have dared anything to drink my blood. Shane wtf is wrong with you? #ShakenShaniac #TetanusShotsShotsShots.

“There’s a lot wrong with him,” Ryan quipped while Shane took another sip.

“It wasn’t my intention to get stabbed with… what did that end up being? A sewing needle?”

“I think it was a hatpin.”

“Right, who the fuck keeps a hatpin in a stuffed toy? Regardless, that was an accident, but, you know, I thought, hey. We’re looking for a cannibal ghost, why not try to appeal to his interests? Looks like it worked. Also, just to put everyone’s mind at ease, I am up to date on my shots, so no worries there.”

“From Facebook, Sarolea Herstal:

When I saw the ouija board moving on its own I thought my soul was going to leave my body. Did you ever find out who Sam was? I s2g you guys are trying to get possessed #Boogara #Postmortem #wtf.

Ryan looked over at Shane. He wasn’t sure if it was the lights, or if he was getting paler.

“I think that one stays in the unsolved category,” Shane said.

“There were quite a few, uh, victims who ended up dying in that house. As many as 20, including Johnny Allen Green’s family. It’s possible it could have been any one of his victims,” Ryan said while nervously picking at his nails.

“Gramtown with TieflingsAndTiaras:

Some people think this incident hurts Shane’s demon cred, but imo this only confirms it for me. Dude took some licks… from a cannibal

Shane paused a moment, staring through is phone. Three deep breaths through his nose went by before Ryan hesitantly reached over to rub slow circles between his shoulders. He was quiet long enough that Ryan was about to call for a break when he swallowed a few times and finally continued.

Dude took some licks from a cannibal ghost and still didn’t die. Also, where can I get my hands on that Lisa Frank ouija board? #DemonShane #Boogara #AESTHETIC.

"Um, the ouija board, which Ryan hated—”

“I hate it, and I hate that we got our best evidence with Baby’s First Ouija Board, or whatever the fuck that shit was.”

“I picked that one up on Ebay. They used to sell it at Toys R Us, before they went out of business, but even before that happened I believe it was taken off shelves because it got a ton of backlash from the usual suspects, the religious hand-wringers. But also another faction that thought it was unnecessarily gendered, I guess. Which, you know, as a gendered person, I didn’t enjoy it any less for its aesthetic. And so far it’s worked better than any of the other ones we’ve used, so that might just speak to the strength of Girl Power? I don’t know. But, yeah. They don’t make it anymore, so you’ll have to look through auction sites for that one.”

“On Facebook from Kurogane Sanrinsha:

Ryan, you’ve said many times before that most child spirits are demons in disguise. That house certainly seemed demonic af, and there were two ‘little girls’ in that house. Def getting some Shining vibes here. Is there any chance Minnie and Dottie were demons? #Boogara #SorryShane #StillDemonproofTho #CreepyKids’ 

"Honestly, I’m pretty sure they were the ghosts of the girls, not demons. Which, frankly, seems even worse. Because these poor kids were murdered, and because it seems to be a residual haunting, they have to relive that night over and over. That, uh… that keeps me up at night, if I’m being honest. I think the only demon there was Johnny Allen Green.”

That was a thought Ryan had been subconsciously trying to process since they escaped the house. Those girls did nothing wrong, but seemed to be damned to hell on earth. The memory of those screams and gunshots made his blood go cold, and his terror of death skyrocket. Shane’s belief system hadn’t been the only one shaken that night.

“It’s possible though,” Ryan thought for a moment. “We never did get any direct responses from the girls. The EVPs we recorded seemed to be that residual haunting, like I said. Afterimages burned into time. Like the shadows of Hiroshima.” He licked his dry lips and felt wet prickles in his eyes. This time it was Shane who reached out, taking a hold of his hand under the table.

“Just this horrific… echo. There didn’t seem to be a consciousness, necessarily. The only one who broke the script was Johnny Allen.” Ryan squeezed Shane’s fingers. “It’s possible he was the only consciousness actually stuck there. That’s what helps me sleep at night at least.”

God this Postmortem was getting rough. Shane drained the last of his drink.

“One more from Gramnation. DavidLee_Birdsong:

Shane has become a believer? Hell has frozen over? Cats and dogs living together? I love Unsolved, but is the show over now? Where do you go from here? #ConfusedBooshaniac #PlsDontGo #illEatUup #iluso #phrasing #F

Shane sat quietly, clutching his mug. He pushed his glasses back into place on his nose, and then laced his fingers together. Ryan wasn’t sure what to say either. They still hadn’t figured this question out themselves. The last official word Shane had said on the matter was that he was leaving. Having to finally confront that question suddenly made Ryan’s heart race and his palms sweat. He felt like he was being pulled apart between either giving up this adventure with his best friend, or continuing to put him in mortal danger. He knew what the responsible choice was, but quitting this show seemed like some kind of small death. He hated himself for feeling that way, considering they almost had a real one. But there the question was, and he was at a loss.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” Shane said quietly. “I could be a real jackass here and tell you that for now it remains unsolved. If I’m being real honest with you guys, when we got back I told Ryan I wanted to quit. I told him flat out I was leaving. I know that… I know that Ryan feels guilty about what happened. It’s his show, his responsibility, his baby. But you know what? I ran up and shook the shit outta that baby. And I’m wondering if we got what we wanted only to lose what we had? I don’t know.”

Shane pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with a trembling hand. He couldn’t quite look at Ryan, and he didn’t think Ryan was looking at him either. Shane thought feeling energy was bullshit, but he didn’t need a sixth sense to feel the sucking black hole of grief coming from his best friend. Numbness started creeping up Shane’s arms and he got the sensation he was looking at himself in third person. Yet somehow his own expression was obscured from him. He was about to lose it, but he didn’t want to fuck this up. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it again. He reached over to take Ryan’s hand again, holding it as tightly as he dared, trying to feel that instead of his phantom arms.

“The Boogara’s are gonna have to come up with some real showstoppers next season, because my standards for evidence just went up to 11.”

⸙⸙


End file.
